Glenlivet Estate

Crown Estate Scotland is the guardian of significant property and marine assets across Scotland and has a significant role to play in Scotland's economic and environmental landscape. Watts Group has been appointed to provide support and advise to CES in this context. 

We are delivering surveying and estate strategy advice to develop a 25 year investment strategy, supported by a total cost model, for the 70,000 acre Glenlivet Estate. The objective is to have full cost estimates for maintaining, renewing and decarbonising the land and property assets under management – and to support strategic resource and capital investment planning.

CES places a strong emphasis on sustainability and environmental stewardship. It works to ensure that the use and development of its assets align with Scotland's environmental and climate goals. At the same time it is tasked with generating revenue. This puts its core objective of generating revenue from its assets alongside this key objective of sustainable management of its assets.

Watts is supporting CES with balancing these objectives and is working with its rural surveyor partner, Bell Ingram, to provide a comprehensive condition appraisal across all assets on the estate. The estate includes 60 farms, four historic structures, over 100 commercial and residential properties, roads, offices, weirs, 124 bridges, culverts, agricultural buildings, sewage and water systems, forests, peatland, open spaces and 24 car parks.

In the context of the Total Cost Model the balance - between generating revenue and managing assets sustainably - is key in determining how the model is developed and used to guide the required ‘transformative investment strategy’ for the estate. This commission is designed to act as a pilot and to develop an approach which will be applied across other CES assets.