Scotland updates muirburn rules in October 2026
If you read the legal text on legislation.gov.uk, it looks like a dense chain of amendments. The simpler version is this: Scotland is updating the rules that govern muirburn so older environmental laws point to the modern system now set out in the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Act 2024. Muirburn usually means the controlled burning of moorland vegetation, often heather. These 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.
The biggest change here is not a brand-new policy created by this instrument. It is a legal tidy-up. Across a series of older Environmentally Sensitive Area orders, Scottish Ministers are replacing references to guidance from 1988 and 1993 with a reference to the new Muirburn Code prepared under section 18 of the 2024 Act. That affects older schemes covering places such as Loch Lomond, Breadalbane, the Central and Western Southern Uplands, Cairngorms Straths, the Central Borders, Stewartry, Argyll Islands and Shetland Islands. If the list feels repetitive, that is because the law is updating each old order one by one.
The explanatory note spells out why this is happening. Part 2 of the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Act 2024 creates a licensing scheme for muirburn, and according to legislation.gov.uk it replaces the old Hill Farming Act 1946 regime on 15 September 2026. Most of the old 1946 muirburn rules are repealed at that point. So the October regulations are what lawyers call consequential amendments. That phrase can sound grand, but it usually means something practical: once a new law is in place, older rules need to be rewritten so they no longer point to a system that has already been switched off.
The changes do not stop with those older area orders. The regulations also amend the Conservation (Natural Habitats, etc.) Regulations 1994 so that duties connected to habitat law and wild bird habitat now take account of Part 2 of the 2024 Act. They also update the Environmental Regulation (Significant Environmental Harm) (Scotland) Order 2014 and the Nature Conservation (Scotland) Act 2004 (Authorised Operations) Order 2016. In plain English, muirburn is being written into Scotland's wider conservation rulebook, rather than sitting in older stand-alone wording from the 1946 Act.
**What this means:** if you are a land manager, crofter, farmer or part of a common grazings committee, the legal signposts are moving. Older leaflets such as The Principles and Practice of Heather Burning and A Muirburn Code are being replaced in these instruments by the new Muirburn Code linked to the 2024 Act. That may sound like a minor wording change, but in law the name of the document matters. It tells you which standards apply, which code decision-makers will look to, and which legal system sits behind the rules.
There is also a timing point worth noticing. The new licensing scheme under Part 2 comes fully into force on 15 September 2026, while these consequential amendments come into force on 10 October 2026. In other words, the main switch happens first, then the follow-up changes bring the rest of the environmental paperwork into line. For readers trying to make sense of public policy, this is a useful example of how legal change often works in practice. The headline law arrives first, but the smaller regulations that make the system readable and usable can follow a few weeks later.
The wider debate around muirburn will not end with this instrument. People who care about moorland management, habitats and wildlife will still argue about where burning should happen, when it should happen and how tightly it should be controlled. But this specific set of regulations does something narrower and easier to pin down. It updates Scotland's environmental legislation so that, from autumn 2026, the rules refer to the new muirburn code and licensing system rather than guidance and powers rooted in much older law. If you want the short version, that is it.