A GROUNDBREAKING deal has been struck with Scotland’s large landowners to help local communities which want to pursue buy-outs from privately owned estates.

The protocol agreed follows a year of secret negotiations between the landowners’ organisation Scottish Land and Estates and Community Land Scotland (CLS), the umbrella body for buy-outs such as Assynt, Eigg and Gigha.

Details will be unveiled at CLS’s annual conference which opens in Stornoway later today.

However, it is understood to provide "route maps" towards the voluntary sale and purchase of land, paving the way for a new era in the at-times strained relationship between both parties.

One route map will be for landowners considering selling their land, or part of their land, to the local community; and another will be for communities who have identified areas they wish to buy from the landowner.

It marks a significant rapprochement between the two bodies who have long been on opposing sides of the land reform debate in public.

The 13-year long acrimonious saga of the community purchase of the Pairc Estate on Lewis, which went all the way to the Court of Session, is known to have convinced both organisations that they should begin talking away from the glare of publicity.

In 2012 three judges, headed by the Lord President, Lord Gill, dismissed the appeal brought by the absentee owner of the Pairc Estate that Scottish Government legislation forcing him to sell to the local crofting community breached his human rights.

The case is understood to have been viewed as a serious development by Scottish Land and Estates, which has been promoting a more positive image of the modern landowner ever since.

This was underlined at its conference in Edinburgh earlier this week, which was billed as looking at “this new era of land ownership” and “the new agenda of engagement and transparency.”

For its part CLS, the driving force in the community land movement, now sees the Land Reform Act as a last but powerful resort to force a landowner to sell land, while recognising the considerable benefits for local people in negotiating a sale instead.

Roseanna Cunningham, the new environment and land reform secretary, addressed the Scottish Land and Estates conference this week and will go to Stornoway to do the same at the CLS gathering.

She previously demonstrated her commitment to a new pattern of landownership in March 2011, when as environment minister she approved the Pairc crofters’ application to launch what was Scotland’s first hostile community buyout.

This week she was clear about the future, saying: “Land reform is at the centre of this Government’s ambitions for a fairer and more prosperous Scotland.

"Land reform can make a real difference to local communities by supporting and revitalising local areas and providing more opportunities for local people to have a say in decisions about land which affect them."

She said she recognised the expertise and role of Scottish Land and Estates and all landowners in managing land; and that many landowners made a huge contribution to Scotland’s economy at both a local and national level.