Opening Up The Land Registry to Show Who Owns Land in England

by | Mar 30, 2026 | Building Surveys, Buying a home, Buying a home privately, Estate Agents, Finding a property, Finding the right property, Getting A Mortgage, Home Buyer Surveys, Home Condition Reports, House Prices, Making An Offer, Repairs and maintenance, Valuations

Get A Professional Home Survey Assessment

 

 

Property Tips by Chartered Surveyors  from the Haynes House Manual series

 

Who owns land in Britain?

 

The Government has recently announced plans to open up the Land Registry to “improve transparency” of land ownership in England.

By removing paywalls to large parts of HM Land Registry the aim is to allow public access to information about land ownership, including relevant maps.

 
Finding out who owns land should make it easier to identify land for housing, giving a major boost to ensuring brownfield sites are developed rather than building on flood plains or Greenbelt land.
 
 
Ending the long-standing culture of secrecy around property ownership should also be helpful when allocating land for farming & food production as well as supporting wildlife and nature restoration. 
 
Another sector to benefit should be energy production (eg solar & wind turbines) helping to achieve UK net-zero goals.
 

Currently, although some data is ‘open access’, there are restrictions on accessing some ownership records. So we should soon be able to see which landowners own large parts of England. 

Revealing secret ‘land banking’

The proposals also include a public register of land option agreements that developers use to secure land.

This should help reduce secrecy around large corporate developers sitting on land for many years, known as ‘land banking’. At the same time this should enable small developers to find potential building sites.

 

More details can be seen in this article in The Guardian

 

 

 
See Rightsurvey.co.uk for a quick guide to valuation and survey prices

 

We would always recommend using RICS certified surveyors in every instance – don’t get caught out, get instant quotes for RICS surveyors here.

 

                                                              

 Ian Rock’s Rightsurvey property tips are taken from the Haynes House Manual series.

 

 

Get A Professional Home Survey Assessment