The question posed by the title of this crucial book has, for nearly a thousand years, been one that as a nation we have mostly been too cowed or too polite to ask. Since the Domesday Book set the standard for a comprehensive land ownership survey – in part so the conqueror could hoover up some of the choicest millions of acres for the crown and its appetite for the hunt – England has never properly addressed the issue. The last major attempt at land reform, which involved a census of ownership, was attempted by the Liberal government of David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill in 1909; it led to constitutional crisis, neutered proposals and partial data. One of the most telling facts in Guy Shrubsole’s book is the revelation that the Land Registry – a body that George Osborne wanted to privatise – possesses details of the ownership of only 83% of England’s green and pleasant plot. Knowledge of the other 17% remains out of bounds even to parliament.
Secrecy about ownership has become deliberately entwined with “an Englishman’s home is his castle” nonsense. That particular phrase has less weight when you consider that only 5%of English land is owned by householders, while 18%, by Shrubsole’s calculations, is in the control of corporate structures and offshore companies, many of them opaque. In France, you can pitch up at your local town hall and ask to see, free of charge, a map of who owns what in your neighbourhood. In England such a request carries a fee and is often frustrated by vague legal niceties around compulsory registration. For an individual to discover all that is known about land ownership in England would cost more than £72m.
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2PxBTYV
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