Council to scour medieval records to find land it owns

Highland Council said it lacked a definitive record of what land and buildings it owned

Highland Council is turning to records dating back more than 400 years to identify land and buildings it owns.

Its proposed £410,000 Terra Tracker project would focus on finding properties that could make it money or savings.

The council said it, like other large organisations, lacked a definitive record of its land and buildings.

It said one of the biggest challenges facing the project was trawling through deeds dating from 1617, and potentially documents written in medieval Latin.

Highland Council is looking at ways of generating additional income to tackle a potential £62m budget deficit.

Some of the council's property was once owned by former district, regional, county and burgh councils.

In a report, officials said: "Most land and buildings owned by The Highland Council are not registered but are still recorded in one of several older registers.

"Principal among these is the General Register of Sasines, which is the oldest national public land register in the world.

"Establishing ownership from Sasine deeds can be challenging for various reasons."

Officers said reasons included medieval records and others with vague descriptions of land.

Councillors will be asked at a meeting next week to approve the setting up of a Terra Tracker team.

The General Register of Sasines was started in 1617 and runs until today, according to the National Records of Scotland.

It said previous attempts to create a national register of land and property ownership included The Secretary's Register, which contains recorded from 1599 to 1609.