Shrubsole argues convincingly that land should be a common good used for the benefit of everyone. Land ownership is the key to tackling some of the most pressing issues facing us today – the housing crisis, the degradation of our natural environment and the growing inequality that is blighting society. Why should we be concerned? Because land is “a common resource that everyone depends on”: for food, homes and the natural landscapes that keep our air clean and provide fresh water. The homeowners’ share adds up to just 5%: “A few thousand dukes, baronets and country squires own far more land than all of Middle England put together.” Half of England is owned by less than 1% of the population. His figures reveal that the aristocracy and landed gentry – many the descendants of those Norman barons – still own at least 30% of England and probably far more, as 17% is not registered by the Land Registry and is probably inherited land that has never been bought or sold. What’s astonishing about his research is how little has changed in the last 1,000 years. Using complex datasets from the Land Registry, freedom of information requests, and other tools available thanks to EU environmental rules, he has managed to lift the veil of secrecy: “The long-term concealment of who owns England appears to me to be one of the clearest cases of a cover-up in English history.”įrom the Norman conquest, when William the Conqueror divided up the country among his barons, to the enclosure of 6.8 million acres of common land between 16 (“a land grab of criminal proportions”), Shrubsole shows how the land has been systematically stolen from ordinary people: “Today most of us are landless.” The aristocracy and landed gentry still own at least 30% of England and probably far more Guy Shrubsole, an activist for Friends of the Earth, has dedicated the last few years to uncovering who really owns the land. Check out your area… England, land ownership is “our oldest, darkest, best-kept secret”. I think this should be better understood, so I’ve made the first ever map of unregistered land in England & Wales.
Remarkably, we don’t know who owns 15% of the country. Twitter comments have noted how some of the 15% area is railway lines – Network Rail apparently haven’t registered their land, or land that has remained in the same hands and unmortgaged since 1990. The data lead Anna Powell-Smith has charted in their latest blog post study the amount of land is still unregistered in England – 15%. As you may know, this project is very much inspired by the great project Who Owns England? led by Guy Shrubsole and a team of researchers, sending in FOI applications and scraping maps to campaign for more transparency in land registration.
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