RoS’ top priority is strategic objective number one – to deliver the benefits of a completed land register. This blog from Head of Land Register Completion, Nikki Duke, outlines how the Unlocking Sasines project is helping us to identify the ownership of Scotland’s land mass.

Progress

We finished the financial year having made significant progress towards our objective, thanks in part to Unlocking Sasines. At 90.7% of land mass coverage in Scotland, this enables us to realise the benefits of a completed land register:

• quicker and more efficient land and property transactions
• data and insight to improve transparency and better answer the question ‘who owns Scotland?'

What is Unlocking Sasines?

We are using spatial data to ‘unlock’ the historic information in the Sasine register. This means that we can link Sasine property search sheets to a map for the first time, making it visually more helpful and accessible. At the end of April 2023, 33.8% of land mass in Scotland currently in the General Register of Sasines has been ‘unlocked’ and when viewed on a map provides an indication of the Sasine search sheet numbers for the land.

Unlocking Sasines provides insights to help deliver the benefits of a completed land register and means that we can continue to meet customer needs now, without having to wait for all land and property in Scotland to transact and move to the land register.

Acknowledgement of thanks to contributors

At the start of the project, we worked closely with a number of organisations who provided their datasets. We would especially like to offer our thanks and acknowledgement of their support in this project to:

• North Ayrshire Council, Legal Services;
• Andy Wightman (Owner of the ‘Who Owns Scotland?’ website);
• Scottish Government Rural Payments and Inspections Division (RPID).

Creating the Unlocking Sasines dataset

We have worked with several internal and external datasets to create the Unlocking Sasines dataset. As a result, the data looks very different to the original information and has been adapted by the following processes:

1. The RoS Geographic Information System (GIS) team process the datasets by removing registered titles and overlaps between data sources.
2. The Unlocking Sasines (US) team search for matches of the spatial data to the textual description held in the Sasines, such as ownership type and last recorded proprietor. This enables them to identify an associated search sheet number.

The searches are carried out at a macro level, therefore on occasions the search sheet number might not always provide a direct link to ownership, they may display where the current ownership was derived.

Reviewing the evidence from the Sasines regarding ownership and boundaries, the US team assign a confidence level ranging from one (highest) to three (lowest). The image below is a snapshot of how the data can be displayed with the three colours representing the different confidence levels.

Releasing the dataset

We are excited to support our business users in introducing new ways in making Sasines more accessible. To support customers and provide early access to this information, we are proposing to release this dataset in its current form, as a pilot.

This is a raw dataset which will signpost you to a search sheet number for the land and will allow researchers and others to access data if they have the appropriate tools. To access it you will need:

• access to mapping software or mapping tools which can display shapefiles
• a ScotLIS business account and knowledge of how to retrieve and interpret Sasine search sheets

Over time, we expect to increase confidence levels on this data, but it is an important milestone in our data journey that we can share with our customers.

What’s next?

Releasing the dataset is a pilot phase to allow customers to use the data and to provide feedback on how they use it and why. This helps us understand and investigate how we can provide the Unlocking Sasines data in a more meaningful and accessible way to all customers, including members of the public, in the next phase of activity.

If you are interested in finding out more about Unlocking Sasines, and wish to discuss access to the dataset, please contact us at unlockingsasines@ros.gov.uk.