Earlier today the privatisation of the Land Registry was finally called off in the Autumn statement:

We have been fighting the privatisation ever since the current attempt was started towards the beginning of 2016. We blogged, responded to the consultation, and had discussions with anyone we thought could help. More recently we joined together with a diverse range of other groups to write a letter to the Minister responsible for the Land Registry, Greg Clarke. In each of these cases, we argued not only that the privatisation should be called off, but that we should use this opportunity to open the information up for everyone.

We are happy the privatisation has been called off, but we are not content. The ownership information held by the Registry is still incomplete (almost 20% of land is unregistered), and expensive to access. People have a right to know who owns the land around them and we think the Land Registry data should be made openly available. This could have huge benefits in many areas. Stimulating the economy, enabling more effective strategic planning, helping tackle the housing crisis, improving environmental programmes and much more.

We will continue to build partnerships to fight for this in coming months. If you are interested in working with us on this please get in touch.