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Landowners could scupper free Land Registry access plans, campaigners warn (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 1 week ago by to c/unitedkingdom@feddit.uk
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[–] 2 points 1 week ago (7 children)

No worries, easily done. I'll get my tuppence worth in as well.

On the how to respond, well it comes down to basically stating why you think opening it up would be a good thing. I've not thought through my response yet, but calling out transparency is helpful for good governance; for being able to easily find ownership of derelict properties; or even just understanding who owns large blocks of land allows appropriate representations to council about management of your local area.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago* (4 children)

    I'm still thinking of a response too. Transparency generally is better.

    My argument would mainly be that the cost is a barrier to normal people and academics looking to do research that would benefit the public. I personally wanted to do research about our local area to see how much land is publicly vs privately owned but the cost of access prohibited me from doing it. However, if I was rich I could just pay, so it's an unfair to have a unnecessary cost being in the way.

    Anti-money laundering is always a good one.

    We already provide company information for free so why should this be any different. If Companies House can operate in this way there is absolutely no reason why the Land Registry cannot. Submitters pay fees when submitting and that should be enough to cover the costs.

    It could save on legal fees when buying a property or settling boundary disputes.

    It would help businesses where the information could help them find potential clients or for infrastructure projects.

    It would help leaseholders to understand who actually owns the land before having to pay solicitors to do checks. Most people go for the cheapest conveyancing so I would guess things are easily missed, especially if each request is a separate cost.

    It would help renters to understand who actually owns the property they are looking to rent. Tenants often only know the Agent and have to rely on everybody acting faithfully. The cost prohibits normal renters checking but free access might mean more checks are available.

    Fundamentally, we have right to know who owns what where our homes, communities, businesses, jobs and travel in between is vital to us.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago (3 children)

    Actually your text just triggered a thought to add to your list - renters being able to easily check who owns a property can help reduce the incidence of fraud where people get signed up for a long term rental and pay money at properties where the fraudster is resident for a couple of weeks via air bnb (yes it really happens - foreign students in particular)

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    I do quite a bit of (and help organise) conservation volunteering. Think countryside and green space path maintenance and management. Woodland path clearing, step building. Just creating nice green space for people to be. Arranging litter picks, working with ecology teams to build habitats etc.

    Sometimes even council publicised paths, walks and tourist areas are a scattered blanket of landownders and complications. Having open access to the land registry makes it much clearer who we can go to and ask about helping make our green spaces nicer.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (1 child)
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