The Scottish Government has made a consequential amendments instrument to bring older environmental legislation into line with the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Act 2024. According to the Scottish Statutory Instrument, the Regulations were made on 20 August 2026, laid before the Scottish Parliament on 24 August 2026 and will come into force on 10 October 2026. In practical terms, this is a statute book maintenance exercise tied to the new muirburn framework. It does not introduce a separate licensing regime of its own. Instead, it updates older references so that secondary legislation points to the 2024 Act and the new Muirburn Code rather than to superseded guidance and repealed provisions under the Hill Farming Act 1946.
The explanatory note is clear on the trigger for these changes. Part 2 of the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Act 2024 establishes a licensing scheme for muirburn and replaces the previous 1946 Act regime when Part 2 comes fully into force on 15 September 2026. That date matters because it falls before these consequential Regulations take effect on 10 October 2026. The policy shift therefore begins with the commencement of Part 2 of the 2024 Act, while this later instrument completes the legal tidy-up across related environmental rules.
A large part of the instrument deals with older Environmentally Sensitive Areas designation orders from 1992 and 1993. In each case, the Regulations replace historic references to the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group leaflet, The Principles and Practice of Heather Burning, published in 1988, or to Scottish Natural Heritage’s 1993 leaflet, A Muirburn Code, with a reference to the Muirburn Code prepared and published under section 18 of the 2024 Act. The affected areas include Loch Lomond, Breadalbane, Central Southern Uplands, Western Southern Uplands, Cairngorms Straths, Central Borders, Stewartry, Argyll Islands and the Shetland Islands. For agreement holders in those schemes, the immediate effect is that the operative standard for muirburn-related requirements is now the statutory code linked to the 2024 Act rather than legacy advisory documents from the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The Shetland amendments are slightly broader in drafting because they apply to both parts of that designation order. The updated reference will apply not only to agreements with a crofter or farmer regarding croft or farmland and apportioned land, but also to agreements with a common grazings committee. For rural land managers, this matters because compliance language in older agreements can otherwise become out of step with the current legal framework. The instrument reduces that risk by directing readers to the current Muirburn Code under section 18 of the 2024 Act, which should now be treated as the relevant operational document where those orders require standards for burning practice.
The Regulations also make less visible, but legally important, changes beyond the Environmentally Sensitive Areas orders. The Conservation (Natural Habitats, &c.) Regulations 1994 are amended so that functions under Part 2 of the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Act 2024 are brought into the framework for duties relating to compliance with the relevant Directives and duties in relation to wild bird habitat. That means muirburn licensing functions are being written into existing nature conservation duties rather than sitting outside them. From a regulatory point of view, this helps connect the new licensing regime with Scotland’s wider habitat and species protection architecture.
Two further amendments complete the picture. The Environmental Regulation (Significant Environmental Harm) (Scotland) Order 2014 is amended to add Part 2 of the 2024 Act to the schedule of specified enactments, and to update an older reference from sections 23 to 26A to sections 24 and 26A. The Nature Conservation (Scotland) Act 2004 (Authorised Operations) Order 2016 is also amended so that a reference to section 23C of the Hill Farming Act 1946 is replaced with a reference to section 14 of the 2024 Act. Taken together, the changes are administrative in form but consequential in effect. They tell public bodies, land managers, advisers and agreement holders which legal text now governs muirburn decisions after the 1946 regime falls away. For practitioners, the key point is straightforward: from autumn 2026, older environmental instruments should be read through the lens of the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Act 2024 and its associated Muirburn Code, not through the retired Hill Farming Act framework. The instrument was signed by Jim Fairlie on behalf of the Scottish Ministers at St Andrew’s House, Edinburgh, on 20 August 2026.