Is the Land Registry on the road towards providing free open access to anyone on who owns what? If so, it’s a huge breakthrough for transparency campaigners
Image – Cambridge Land Justice – part of Cambridge Resilience Web
Remember that thing I said about controversial announcements being made on a Thursday afternoon just as MPs are heading back to their constituencies? (Apart from those sticking around for the Private Members Bill allocated day on Fridays).
The exchange of letters
To cut a long story short, see Guy Shrubsole’s blogpost here. The longer version is in his book here.
Basically if the Land Registry makes this information freely available to the public, transparency campaigners can identify who owns what – particularly useful when it comes to trying to get derelict sites or underused sites back into public use.
“Who needs to do what, next?”
C&P-ing Mr Shrubsole:
- 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.
- 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.
“How can we help persuade him?”
Go directly to your MP via https://www.writetothem.com/ (or their website/office if you know it) and see the details in the template letter on Mr Shrubsole’s web page here, scrolling down.
Some of you may want to copy and paste the text, topping and tailing any email/letter you send. Others may want to keep it more brief and say that they heard of the Housing Ministers plans on opening up the Land Registry data, support the proposals, and would like your MP to make your views known to the Minister and to ask what the timetable will be for turning the words into actions.
It could make things interesting for the Cambridge Land Justice Campaign and other Resilience Web activists who are trying to map out who owns what land around Cambridge mindful of the proposals coming forward in light of the Government’s ambition for the growth of Cambridge.
Worth keeping an eye on how this progresses – and may also be a suitable topic for discussion at the recently-opened Cambridge Room in The Grafton Centre as well.
Talking of Cambridge’s future – Cambs Unitaries Campaign
We’re meeting on Sat 08 March 2025 at the Mill Road Community Centre from 11am. (You don’t need to sign up but I created an EB page here) It’s free, all welcome. We’ll have maps and diagrams of the options we think local councils have regarding the proposed restructure amongst other things. More details from Cambs Unitaries Campaign here.
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Below – from the Cambs Unitaries Campaign, population data diagram by Phil Rodgers. While there is some flexibility on numbers, ministers have said to consider a population of 500,000 for new unitary councils to be a minimum.
The Cambridge Town Owl 