Who owns Britain? Biggest landowners agree to reveal scale of holdings (2007)

[Hannah Bell]

A complete picture of who owns modern Britain is to be created as part of the biggest survey of land ownership since William the Conqueror commissioned the Domesday Book nearly a thousand years ago.
But the task is enormous as 40 per cent of land in England and Wales has not been registered by its owners. More than half of all rural land and rural buildings are unregistered.

Under the ambitious scheme sponsored by the Government, some of the country's oldest and most secretive families are to reveal the full scale of their private estates. The Queen and the Prince of Wales are among the biggest landowners who are co-operating with the Land Registry's attempt to plot every acre of land in England and Wales.

Land that has not been sold or mortgaged does not have to be registered and so many landowners whose property has not changed hands for a hundred years have been able to keep their ownership secret.

Despite the introduction of a series of new registration laws, millions of titles to land have escaped legal registration - much of this property is owned by the aristocracy and those families who were once referred to as the landed gentry.

The biggest estates

THE DUKE OF NORFOLK

The current Duke of Norfolk is His Grace Edward Fitzalan-Howard, 18th Duke of Norfolk... These Catholic estates run to 16,000 acres mostly around Arundel Castle and are the largest in Sussex. The Duke owns a further 30,000 acres outside of Sussex. They have never been documented....

DUCHY OF LANCASTER

The Duchy of Lancaster traces its origins back to 1265, when King Henry lll made a grant of land to his son Edmund. Valued at around £341m, the estate is held in trust for the sovereign of the day in his or her role as Duke of Lancaster. Its 18,700 hectares across England and Wales range from the Savoy Estate in London to the Goathland Estate in Yorkshire and include urban developments, historic buildings, farmland and areas of natural beauty...

DURHAM CATHEDRAL

Durham Cathedral and its holdings are the latest properties to be mapped under the registration programme. The dean and chapter own 2,470 acres across the diocese...

DUCHY OF CORNWALL

The Duchy of Cornwall's 54,764 hectares are spread across 23 counties, mainly in the south-west of England. Created in 1337 by Edward III for his son and heir, Edward the Black Prince, the Duchy provides a private income for the Prince of Wales...

[xchrom]

1. This will be interesting to keep an eye on. Nt

[grasswire]

2. is there a link for that?

I'd like to read more. Thanks so very much.

[Hannah Bell]

3. sorry , forgot. here it is:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/who-owns-britain-biggest-landowners-agree-to-reveal-scale-of-holdings-443956.html

[Hannah Bell]

4. link:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/who-owns-britain-biggest-landowners-agree-to-reveal-scale-of-holdings-443956.html

[rve300]

5. This doesn't ring true....

Local governments do not turn a blind eye to unregistered and UNTAXED property for centuries.

If they don't know what you have the they can't tax you, and no modern developed western government on this planet lets any scrap of private property go untaxed.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_Tax

[Hannah Bell]

6. Take it up with the Independent; link provided above.

[rve300]

7. Yes, I read the story.

I don't have the time or resources to chase up a 3 year old story. I was just making an observation that I thought was common sense.

[Hannah Bell]

8. depends on who holds the balance of power. that's common sense too.

[malaise]

14. Ding ding n/t

[Taitertots]

9. Taxes are for the poor whose land is sold and/or mortgaged

Not the ruling elite whose land only changes hands with deaths and marriage.

[Xithras]

10. Britain doesn't tax property the way the U.S. does.

They levy taxes against habitable residences. Privately owned land with no homes on it doesn't get taxed (if the land is used to produce goods of any kind, those goods are taxed, so it works out in the end). A single piece of land with three residences on it gets taxed three times. That's the way council taxes work.

A family can own a piece of empty land for centuries and, if it never does anything with it, never owe a dime of taxes for it. If the land is used to generate money (for farming, logging, etc), the goods produced from the land are taxed instead of the land itself.

The U.S. model of valuing the land itself and assigning taxes to the property as a whole is, as far as I know, fairly unique to the U.S. A lot of environmentalists actually prefer the British system, because the American system was designed to encourage development of land. Empty, unused land is a financial liability. This is good for the economy, but bad for the environment. The British system allows people to hold land in a natural state tax free, and only taxes them if they want to use the land to generate income, or if they develop it for commercial uses or residences.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

12. The entire model is different.

It should be noted that council tax is payable by the occupants of the property, not the owners. The owners are liable for tax on income from rental, though, amongst other things. In general council tax goes to support local services which are likely to be used by the occupants. And if I'm not mistaken, tax from rental income is simply counted as UK general fund revenue.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

11. There are some rather glaring inconsistencies in this article.

I agree with the basic premise of what the government is trying to do, but this article is rather muddled. For instance...

Land that has not been sold or mortgaged does not have to be registered and so many landowners whose property has not changed hands for a hundred years have been able to keep their ownership secret.

Surely this means that property that has been sold or mortgaged does have to be registered. (And it is certainly the experience of everyone I know in the UK that they have to register upon purchasing property.) So it's a bit odd that later in the article it is stated that:

Other landowners, particularly very private celebrities or aristocrats, may not want to give details of their properties and land which would be made available on a public register.

In the case of an aristocrat then it's quite possible that the land has not changed hands in a very long time. That's hardly the case for celebrities, even "very private" celebrities. The rules are quite clear in stating that property that changes hands must be registered.

The second large problem with the article is the "Biggest Estates" section, which claims to know the actual sizes of the largest estates even though much of the land on those is estates is unregistered, and therefore its extent is unknown.

[Hannah Bell]

13. Who Owns Britain is the first detailed look at landownership in Britain in modern times.

•Tells the story of the 'Lost Doomsday', the return of Owners of Land of 1872, until now the only comprehensive record of landownership in Britain ever compiled
•Updates and examines who owns what in all 118 counties of Britain and Ireland
•Compares landownership in Britain and Ireland then and now, highlighting how in Britain 70% of land is still owned by less than 1% of the population
•Reveals the immovable vested interests of Britains landed aristocracy
This extraordinary investigation of Britain's best-kept secret also exposes:

•The myth behind the alleged sarcity of land - less than 8% of the country is under concrete
•The ongoing failure of the Land Registry - 76 years on, up to 50% of the land in England and Wales remains unregistered
•The scandalous undervaluation of the Crown Estate and its role as the next great Goverment sell-off
•How the Church of England has 'mislaid' 1.5 million acres it owned 100 years ago
•The startling accumulation of land by the Royal Family, who now own or control the equivalent of an average-sized county in England

http://www.who-owns-britain.com/