Jan 21st, 2019: England & Wales, Who Owns It?

[xoxoxoBruce]

It seems nobody knows who owns about 15% (about 5.2 million acres) of England and Wales.
That’s misleading though, every bit is owned by someone, and someone knows who owns each piece, but
there is nobody who knows who all the owners are, and what they own.
200 years ago buying and selling land was complicated for lack of a central registry, but it provided lots of
work(income) for lawyers who fought to keep it that way.
150 years ago a central registry was established but few bothered because it was difficult and the lawyers liked that.

Registration on sale did not finally become compulsory everywhere for nearly a century, on 1 December 1990 – “the day,” one Chief Land Registrar wrote ecstatically, “all my predecessors had dreamt of”
In 1998, the Blair government also made registration compulsory when land was inherited, as well as when it was sold. This speeded up progress, along with a push by Land Registry to get existing landowners to register.
In early 2005, the area of the country registered was under 50%; as of today, it’s just over 85%.

While Land Registry has committed to comprehensive registration by 2030, it has no powers to enforce it, progress has slowed in the past few years, and it is unclear how it can achieve 100% coverage.
Here at Who Owns England, we think one simple solution would bring a great deal of land onto the register at a stroke: the government should require all land to be registered, with details of its beneficial owner, before it can receive farm subsidies.
This change would not only simplify planning and conveyancing, it is fair: if public money is used to support and improve land, we should know who benefits from it.
Happily, this proposal has been put forward as an amendment to the current Agriculture Bill by Caroline Lucas MP, with support from the Royal Town Planning Institute.

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