Solum Rights - good try but ultimately doomed to fail?

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Altnabreac Station case, and clearly there are many, the issues around Solum that have been identified is surely the most intriguing. Solum rights will mean different things to different people. For those of us living outside Scotland the concept is potentially harder to grasp but even I’ve come away with the idea that it is more of a burden on the land than a trump of ownership. A way for landowners to keep tenants in check or alternatively a method for an absolute owner to demonstrate they owned everything in their title “from the centre of the earth to the sky”. 

Judgement Awaits
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I’ve also seen the term Solum used to describe the value of land without anything growing on it. For example the value of an area of forest without taking account of the value of the timber.

I’m quite prepared to believe that in their deeds pack the new owners of Station Cottage will have a dusty old deed, rich in legalese, that makes mention of the Solum. In one of their videos they say as much, describing the document as a “gold mine”. Of course their challenge now is to bring that gold mine into the reality of the 21st Century.

What I find particularly interesting is that the extent of this document apparently exceeds the boundaries of even CTH5589. CTH5589 does not include the railway line, the station platforms, the water tower or the piece of land to the east of Station Cottage where the new access path has been built. Yet all of these areas appear to be included in the claim.

The second aspect that surprises me is that the claim of ownership based on Solum rights is not just limited to railway land. There must be other land owners in the area whose ownership is now being similarly challenged. How are they being represented in the court case?

My judgement is that the claim will fail, not on the merits of its legal argument, which will be pretty thin, but because anything else would be politically unacceptable in modern Scotland. Alex Salmond’s dream of defining “who owns Scotland by 2024” was specifically aimed at removing such uncertainty. With the area around Altnabreac now well defined on the Land Registry of Scotland map, nobody will thank the Sheriff who unpicks that, and potentially sets dangerous precedent, all on the basis of some ancient and obsolete claim.

The second area where the claim would bump up against political reality is when it threatens Scotland’s Green agenda. Any ruling that appears to jeopardise the ability to haul timber by rail rather than by road will simply not be tolerated.