Monday, January 14, 2019

Who Owns England - Part III

For the last two years Who Owns England has been diligently trying to discover who owns what land in England, Scotland and Wales. This is quite hard because the UK government doesn't want its citizens to know who owns their country. This task is also complicated by the fact that 15% of land in England & Wales is unregistered.

That is why Who Owns England has now released Where is the Unregistered Land. This interactive map shows where land in England and Wales is not registered with the government's Land Registry. Who Owns England has also published a blog post, The Holes in the Map, where they explain why so much land is unregistered in England & Wales. This post also attempts to explain who might own some of this land and why it is so important to know who land is owned by.

While we are on the subject of who owns England and Wales - last year the BBC discovered that 97,000 properties in England and Wales are owned by overseas companies. In Firms on Caribbean island chain own 23,000 UK properties the BBC has mapped all the properties in England & Wales which are owned by these overseas companies.

The map reveals that in central London a huge percentage of properties are now owned by overseas firms. For example in Kensington and Chelsea more than 6,000 properties are owned by companies registered overseas. If you want to know who owns a property you can click on the map marker to reveal the name of the company and the country of the owner.

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