When I started this blog back in August, I didn’t expect it to generate the interest that it has. But I’ve been constantly blown away by the number of readers, retweets, media interest and, most of all, kind offers of help. My thanks to everyone who’s read and contributed to this blog over these past months – and particularly to two contributors who wanted to remain anonymous, but who have done a huge amount to help me obtain and crunch through data on who owns England.
A new year’s a good time to take stock, so I thought I’d do a summary of what I’ve found out so far, and follow that up with a taster of investigations yet to come.
What do we now know about Who owns England?
We now know that:
- 50 companies own 1.3 million acres of England & Wales – including housebuilders Taylor Wimpey, supermarket giant Tesco and building materials company Lafarge.
- Nine water companies own 345,977 acres of England – rising to 423,952 acres of England & Wales when Welsh Water is added in. Eight of the water utilities make it into the top 50 land-owning companies in England & Wales. Some are much more transparent than others, with some of the largest landowning water utilities – like United Utilities and Yorkshire Water – still refusing to release maps of their landholdings.
- Grouse moors cover at least 550,000 acres of England, with at least 300,000 of these acres owned by just 30 huge estates – a number of which are owned offshore, and most of whom rake in large public farm subsidies. This survey’s far from complete, however, with many more grouse moor estates yet to be listed and mapped.
- The Ministry of Defence owns 750,000 acres. Despite their historic secrecy, the MOD have disclosed to me a map of their land holdings for the first time.
- The rest of Whitehall’s government departments own 192,588 acres. You can see maps of land owned by DEFRA, Natural England, the Environment Agency and the former Department of Energy & Climate Change here; and here’s details on land owned by the Homes & Communities Agency.
- Oxford Colleges own at least 29,000 acres and probably more like 128,000 acres, but the richest colleges are reluctant to disclose details, whilst the poorest are happy to declare they own little land. Quelle surprise…
- The Grosvenor Estate owns 140,000 acres – including a grouse moor, farmland and 300 acres of central London’s prime real estate – all recently inherited by the 25-year-old Seventh Duke of Westminster.
- The Forestry Commission owns 2.2 million acres, making it the single largest landowner in Britain, while the RSPB owns 320,000 acres – check out maps of the land owned by these two organisations here.
- The Crown still claims ownership of the Houses of Parliament, despite the monarch having been forbidden to enter the Commons since the Civil War.
- Only 80% of the land in England and Wales has been registered, with a fifth yet to be recorded by the Land Registry. But the good news is that the Land Registry has been saved from privatisation, and more organisations are now calling for it to be opened up – something the government has hinted very tentative support for.
So what’s next?
Rest assured there is much, much more to come. So here’s a sneak peek at some of the investigations and blog posts I’ve got underway:
- I’m hoping to share with you a map of all the land ownership data I’ve gathered so far – the most comprehensive map of land ownership in England yet built.
- Who owns England’s uplands? I’ve been given funding by Chapter 7 / The Land Is Ours to construct a complete map of land ownership of the English uplands. This will build on previous investigations into grouse moors and water utilities. The uplands are a fascinating and heavily contested part of the English landscape: who owns and manages them is of great importance to reducing flooding, protecting species, and combatting climate change. Yet they are owned by a vanishingly small number of people and organisations.
- Who owns the land most sought-after for housebuilding? And is landbanking by certain firms and individuals driving up house prices?
- Who owns our best-quality agricultural land? And is it being used wisely, or wasted?
- What land is owned by councils? This one’s gonna take a lot of work to pull together, but a group of kind volunteers have offered to help out.
- What do the Royals own? I’ll be picking apart the ancient landholdings of the Crown Estate, the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster, and the Queen’s private estates.
Onwards into 2017 – and to answering the question of who owns England!
Who owns England? 
This is a magnificent achievement, Guy. Congratulations to you and everyone who has been helping, anonymously and otherwise. I can see a book and a media campaign in the offing, and I believ e there will be an election in a 2019 (if not earlier).
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Great work. The more hard facts there are that are publicly available the better. I look forward to learning more from you. Could have done with some of this information when I wrote a slightly tongue in cheek blog post looking at landownership in the UK from a very lateral minded point of view….
what if General citizens owned land and benefitted from it the way the queen does?
https://rubiksplanet.wordpress.com/2015/01/02/universal-basic-capital/#more-3
RP
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Keep up the fantastic work.
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Thankyou!
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This is fascinating stuff. Any info on how much land churches/religious organisations own?
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Thanks! I’ll be posting about this in future I hope – in a nutshell, the Church Commissioners own around 105,000 acres and Dioceses own more. There’s a lot of uncertainty about what’s happened to ‘glebe land’ – with a lot of it likely to have been sold off in the past century.
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All power to you
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Please connect up with The Land Is Ours http://www.tlio.org.uk
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Thanks George – I’m in touch with them. 🙂
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Brilliant Work Guy
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it is certainly interesting subject and i think you are on something here. However from what i understand England is 130,279 km2, which is over 32 million acres (approximately 1.5 acres per person).
it would be interesting to know who owns the remaining 90%ish.
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Hi Herve, you’re quite right – England is around 32 million acres – the entire UK, about 60 million acres. I reckon I’ve tracked down the owners of only about 10% of this UK-wide figure so far – mostly institutional owners within the public and third sectors. The remainder will be largely in private ownership, and I suspect a very large proportion of this is highly concentrated into large estates. A full answer requires the Land Registry to be opened up!
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Interesting. Another angle worth investigating I think is how much of England/UK is foreign-owned (owned by people/institution living abroad), and whether any land is owned by other sovereign countries. I appreciate this is probably impossible to find out right now.
Well done on starting to piece this jigsaw though.
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Bravo, much needed work! Really good!
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Thank you for the facts and your huge efforts. It’s only facts and practical suggestions coming from many of us that will change anything. Your contribution is invaluable. I believe I read about 20 years ago (and sorry, I have no idea how it could have been calculated), that around 90% of the population of the UK live on 10% of the land. I suspect that hasn’t changed much. It’s pretty shocking, given the current housing crisis. Onward
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You will probably already know of Kevin Cahill’s book “Who Owns Britain” (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Owns-Britain-Ireland-Kevin-Cahill/dp/1841953105), but check it out if not. Also the National Trust are a huge landowner; their website says “We’re the nation’s largest farmer, with more than 618,000 acres of land and about 2,000 tenants.”
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Hi Peter. Thanks, yes – have a well-thumbed copy! Also on the National Trust, they’re on our map here: map.whoownsengland.org.
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I truly hate the land owning establishment, after working for over 25 years, and having nothing at all to show for it. No property. No capital. And now I cannot work any longer. Due to illness and am facing homelessness.
Can we start with an updated version of the second domesday book, published online, by the land registry for free, followed sharply by a REAL land value tax?
Well done. Keep pushing. Lets destroy these parasites once and for all.
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