Deer stalking rates change 'will cost 100 keepers' jobs'
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SCRAPPING business rate exemptions for deer stalking will cost the jobs of over 100 rural workers, according to the Scottish Gamekeepers Association (SGA).
And the SGA belives that further job losses will follow as land reforms bed in.
The SGA announced a year-long initiative yesterday (Thursday), outlining the vital role land labourers and their families play in community life.
Curently, the SGA represents 5,300 members with around 1,500 of those employed as full-time gamekeepers, land or river ghillies, wildlife managers and rangers.
After taking soundings from its membership, the SGA believes that seven per cent of those may face redundancy and housing problems immediately if radical land reforms are pushed through.
As part of a package of land reform measures, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced last November that sporting estates would now be required to pay business rates. The Conservative Government made sporting estates exempt from paying business rates in 1994.
Launching The Year of the Rural Worker, at the body’s AGM in Perth, chairman Alex Hogg urged politicians from all parties not to make stretched families pay the price for change.
"As an organisation, we are aware there are situations in which land reform can work," said mr Hogg.
"We oppose bad management of all kinds, whether the ownership is public or private.
"However, removing business rate exemptions for shooting and stalking won’t help achieve a million acres of land in community hands by 2020, it will simply cost the job of a working person on every marginal estate or shoot across Scotland.
"Businesses adapt to financial change. The overwhelming view of our members is that, on estates where sporing profits are tight, that adjustment will be a wage.
"That is likely to be a worker on a modest salary who receives a house to bring up a family in the local community. These individuals give a great deal back to Scotland, for which they take little in return, but they keep the heartbeat in small places. They have had nothing to do with the way land ownership patterns have emerged, yet it is them who will be made to suffer.
"That’s not social justice. If land reform is such a priority for the Scottish Government, they must find a better way to finance the Land Fund than by placing working people on the dole."
