This post is by Guy Shrubsole.

Today the UK Government has announced plans to open up the Land Registry – which, if delivered, will finally reveal more about who owns land in England and Wales.

Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook has written to HM Land Registry (HMLR) setting out the Government’s expectations and priorities for it, stating:

• That the Land Registry must “widen and deepen transparency of land ownership and control”, and work on “opening up existing data and information on land, improving its accessibility and lowering the barriers to access, including tackling the cost of obtaining data”;
• “I expect HMLR to work quickly on plans to restructure their charging model… I would like plans to be developed which prioritise free access to data, in particular minimising the cost of information services wherever possible”; and,
• “I am also very interested in making rapid progress towards enabling others to map HMLR data, for example by linking title numbers with INSPIRE IDs… in published datasets”.

Currently, it costs £7 to view a single land title register, and with 24m land titles registered, it would cost a member of the public £168m to find out who owns all of England and Wales. If the Government’s shift in policy towards the Land Registry is enacted, this should result in search fees dropping to zero – though it would require a Minister to table secondary legislation in Parliament to do so. Search fees comprise just 5.3% of the Land Registry’s income, with the vast majority of their revenues coming from conveyancing costs from people buying homes.

Maps of who owns land in England are even harder to access currently. Since 2017, the Land Registry has published large datasets listing the land and property owned by UK and overseas companies, but hasn’t released accompanying maps. In future, if the datasets were published with unique geographical identifiers for each address, called INSPIRE IDs, it would allow campaigners to map them – thereby revealing, for example, if developers are land banking.

This Ministerial direction also follows proposals in the recently-launched Land Use consultation that the Government wants to reform the Land Registry by “making more data free to access”.

Having campaigned for years to open up the Land Registry, I’m delighted by today’s announcement. I started this blog nine years ago, in 2016. My book Who Owns England? was published in 2019. About eighteen months ago, I was approached by some civil servants in what was then the Department for Levelling Up, now MHCLG, who had read my book and wanted to discuss how to improve the transparency of land ownership data. I’ve been in touch with them since then as they’ve developed their ideas, and last September had a meeting with Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook to discuss these issues. I’ve no doubt that MHCLG have also been speaking to many other campaigners and data analysts about this and I’m really pleased they’ve taken this long-overlooked subject seriously.

Who owns land is England’s oldest, darkest secret. Land ownership has always been bound up with wealth and power, with 1% of the population owning half of England.

So it’s hugely welcome that Labour wants to open up the Land Registry for the first time in its 163-year history. This is a bold, far-sighted move by Minister Matthew Pennycook, and I look forward to him swiftly tabling the secondary legislation needed to remove search fees, and to the Land Registry unlocking more of the maps and datasets that it holds without further delay.

As someone once said, this is not the end; it is not even the beginning of the end. But at least it is the end of the beginning…

What needs to happen next?

1. The Government needs to swiftly pass the secondary legislation needed to drop search fees. All that is needed to achieve this is to table a very short and simple Statutory Instrument to amend the Land Registration Fee Order 2024, Schedule 3, Part 2, so that fees for inspection of the register by electronic means are reduced from £7 per individual title register and title plan to £0.
2. The Land Registry needs to open up maps of land owned by companies and corporate bodies. To do this, HM Land Registry should be required to include INSPIRE IDs for each land parcel listed in the datasets of UK and overseas company land ownership that it publishes each month. There is nothing in terms of licensing or technical barriers preventing them from doing so immediately.

What you can do to help: Please write to Minister Matthew Pennycook to say you support these plans, and encourage the Government and Land Registry to move swiftly to put them into action.

The Minister’s email is: Ministerial.Correspondence@communities.gov.uk

Here’s a template email you could adapt and send:

Subject line: FAO Minister Pennycook – support for opening up the Land Registry

Dear Minister Pennycook,

I was delighted to read your Chair’s Letter setting out your plans to open up the Land Registry. I’m writing to you to express my strong support for this; to urge you to please table the necessary legislation to drop search fees as soon as possible; and to ensure the Land Registry open up more of its datasets immediately.

Who owns land in England and Wales has been a secret for far too long. The Land Registry has existed since 1862 so this is an historic move to finally make it publicly accessible. Finding out who owns land is prohibitively expensive: it costs £7 to view a single land title register, and with 24m land titles registered, it would cost a member of the public £168m to find out who owns England and Wales!

I therefore applaud your proposals to “widen and deepen transparency of land ownership and control”; for the Land Registry to “work quickly on plans to restructure their charging model” and to “prioritise free access to data”; and to make “rapid progress towards enabling others to map HMLR data.”

Opening up this vital data will help deliver innovation and growth by boosting start-up businesses; increase affordable housebuilding by helping councils and communities identify suitable land, and revealing developers who are land-banking; combat money-laundering by corrupt regimes who invest in the UK property market; provide crucial underpinning for the Government’s forthcoming Land Use Framework; and make it easier for communities, farmers and conservationists to link up land to create wildlife corridors.

To put these bold plans into effect immediately, I ask that you please swiftly pass the secondary legislation needed to drop search fees. All that is needed to achieve this is to table a very short and simple Statutory Instrument to amend the Land Registration Fee Order 2024, Schedule 3, Part 2, so that fees for inspection of the register by electronic means are reduced from £7 per individual title register and title plan to £0.

I also ask please that you ensure the Land Registry open up maps of land owned by companies and corporate bodies. To do this, HM Land Registry should be required to include INSPIRE IDs for each land parcel listed in the datasets of UK and overseas company land ownership that it publishes each month. This very simple tweak would enable land owned by these companies to be mapped using INSPIRE Index Polygons. There are no licensing or technical restrictions on doing so; all that is lacking is political direction.

Thankyou again for today’s announcement and I look forward to these reforms being put into effect swiftly.

Yours sincerely,

[YOUR NAME]