GLISH are strangely obses- nd secretive about the owner- ad and property. In other nd Commonwealth countries, in Scotland, it is as simple to o owns the empty house next :0 vote. Here, you might as well ind out the colour of a person’s 3 landed gentry consider it al- e. years since the last Domesday arried out. Now, at a time when lues are increasingly emotive, nounting from a broad church ials and activists for the market down, and for an inventory of s assets to be openly available c. I Registry, tucked away in Lin- ields, London, is the Aladdin’s ormation on property owner- :h many people would like ac- 'e that all property transactions ecorded, a process paid for by Les claim that the system is ef- iulti-million-pound tax levying its precious records are closed al public; a third partyis’ only sult the records relating to a :ce of land with the consent of 7 now starts to sound like a It from a novel by Trollope, it is iticking and obfuscation. A bill Land Registry publicly accessi- ed back in March 1988 but has ted on. The Lord Chancellor’s , which runs the Land Registry, was impossible to open it until The date has now slipped to 990. e for the delay sounds reason- . . During the property boom of people were moving house at that the Land Registry devel- sive backlog of transfers to be ad the Lord Chancellor’s de- uuld like to see this cleared and d first. ise, however, leaves pressure grofessionals in the field splut- say that for years the Treasury e Land Registry’s profits while invest in extra staff and new to clear this backlog. not in short supply. The Lord : report for 1988 shows that the :ry made profits of more than umover of £l87m in that year registrations, plus an extra other inquiries. The total num- rations and inquiries amounted iillion. PROPERTY The strange secrets of who owns What Why should it be so hard to find out who property belongs to in England and Wales? Kevin Cahill explains EDWARD BRIANT To ordinary people this distant body may hold the key to a problem they cannot solve alone. Tenants who cannot track landlords, home-owners who want to stop vandalism on empty properties, or to stem the damp creeping in from a neighbouring house, are stumped. Even environmental health officers serving nuisance notices are sometimes reduced to pinning their com- plaints to the door, because they carmot trace the owners of the house. At the Empty Property Unit, run by Shelter, feelings run high. Efforts to find the owners of derelict inner-city buildings, and press these eyesores back into use as short-life shelter for the homeless, are per- petually frustrated. When the owners are found, organisers of short-life housing offer them legal agreements which guarantee that they will get vacant poss- ession of their properties on demand. Until this kind of sleuth work is made easier, the ownership of a vast bank of use- able empty property remains a mystery. A snapshot of how many empty houses there are was provided by the Department of En- vironment in 1988. It showed that 120,900 properties lay vacant in local authority ownership countrywide, with 579,500 in pri- vate hands. While the work of the Empty Property Unit has some Conservative backbench support, its parliamentary bill, to enable local councils to serve Empty Property Use Orders on buildings which have been emp- ty for six months, was thrown out at the second reading last year. Whatever the vir- tue of reclaiming derelict property, the bill was seen as an attempt to wrest thousands of houses out of private ownership. Michael Pattison, secretary general of ie Royal Institution of Chartered Survey- rs, is eager for the cobwebs to be swept ut of the Land Registry and for a new lqmesday survey _to be carried out. “In ritain we ‘have this hallowed tradition of .cr_ecy which has prevented it happening ntil now,” he says. V Rather hke William the Conqueror, he puld insist that every plot of land be regis- .red according to ownership and value, in- exed to a map reference. “This would not e dlfflclllt because digital mapping tech- iques are now very advanced,” he adds_ [e lS convinced the selling of so much use- .11 knowledge would turn the Land Regis- FY _1I1t0 8 highly profitable billion-pound usiness. Certainly in other parts of the world where the registry has recently been com- iuterised, the number of inquiries has mul- iplied astonishingly. Professor Peter Dale, /ho runs the Department of Land Survey-0 ng at East London Polytechnic, noted that vhen the registry in Adelaide in Australia vas recently computerised, the yearly level 4,000 eizc ". iweden in 1987. So who, if anyone, is lobbyingrfor secre- . I :y? Polls carried out three years ago showed that most professionals in the property world and most members of the public want the Land Registry opened as soon as possible. However, more than half the lawyers polled wanted to keep it closed because registration represents a substan- tial part of their conveyancing business. The Country Landowners’ Association, with its 49,000 members who own 80 per cent of agricultural land in Britain, is equally obdurate. To them, land ownership is a private matter and “not something for every busybody in the country to get their hands on”, as one member sniffed unhelpfully. It is believed that the owners of some of the great estates, which have been put into overseas trusts to avoid inheritance and other taxes, would not like it publicly known that they are in fact registered in Panama or Switzerland. There is also the very real fear that information revealed by the Registry might be used for company mail shots. Privately, a lot of developers recognise that an open land market might reveal a great deal more land available for develop- ment than we are aware of at present. As a result, the value of land itself might drop as it became less scarce, with the knock-on effect that the price of houses would slip too. GLISH are strangely obses- nd secretive about the owner- ad and property. In other nd Commonwealth countries, in Scotland, it is as simple to o owns the empty house next :0 vote. Here, you might as well ind out the colour of a person’s 3 landed gentry consider it al- e. years since the last Domesday arried out. Now, at a time when lues are increasingly emotive, nounting from a broad church ials and activists for the market down, and for an inventory of s assets to be openly available c. I Registry, tucked away in Lin- ields, London, is the Aladdin’s ormation on property owner- :h many people would like ac- 'e that all property transactions ecorded, a process paid for by Les claim that the system is ef- iulti-million-pound tax levying its precious records are closed 'al public; a third partyis’ only sult the records relating to a :ce of land with the consent of 7 now starts to sound like a It from a novel by Trollope, it is iticking and obfuscation. A bill Land Registry publicly accessi- ed back in March 1988 but has ted on. The Lord Chancellor’s , which runs the Land Registry, was impossible to open it until The date has now slipped to 990. e for the delay sounds reason- . . During the property boom of people were moving house at that the Land Registry devel- sive backlog of transfers to be ad the Lord Chancellor’s de- uuld like to see this cleared and d first. ise, however, leaves pressure srofessionals in the field splut- say that for years the Treasury e Land Registry’s profits while invest in extra staff and new to clear this backlog. not in short supply. The Lord : report for 1988 shows that the :ry made profits of more than umover of £l87m in that year registrations, plus an extra other inquiries. The total num- rations and inquiries amounted ullion. ,4 -.- PROPERTY The strange secrets of who owns What Why should it be so hard to find out who property belongs to in England and Wales? Kevin Cahill explains EDWARD BRIANT To ordinary people this distant body may hold the key to a problem they cannot solve alone. Tenants who cannot track landlords, home-owners who want to stop vandalism on empty properties, or to stem the damp creeping in from a neighbouring house, are stumped. Even environmental health officers serving nuisance notices are sometimes reduced to pinning their com- plaints to the door, because they carmot trace the owners of the house. At the Empty Property Unit, run by Shelter, feelings run high. Efforts to find the owners of derelict inner-city buildings, and press these eyesores back into use as short-life shelter for the homeless, are per- petually frustrated. When the owners are found, organisers of short-life housing offer them legal agreements which guarantee that they will get vacant poss- ession of their properties on demand. Until this kind of sleuth work is made easier, the ownership of a vast bank of use- able empty property remains a mystery. A snapshot of how many empty houses there are was provided by the Department of En- vironment in 1988. It showed that 120,900 properties lay vacant in local authority ownership countrywide, with 579,500 in pri- vate hands. While the work of the Empty Property Unit has some Conservative backbench support, its parliamentary bill, to enable local councils to serve Empty Property Use Orders on buildings which have been emp- ty for six months, was thrown out at the second reading last year. Whatever the vir- tue of reclaiming derelict property, the bill was seen as an attempt to wrest thousands of houses out of private ownership. Michael Pattison, secretary general of ie Royal Institution of Chartered Survey- rs, is eager for the cobwebs to be swept ut of the Land Registry and for a new lomesday survey to be carried out. ‘‘In ritain we have this hallowed tradition of zcrecy which has prevented it happening ntil now,” he says. Rather like William the Conqueror, he 'ould insist that every plot of land be regis- zred according to ownership and value, in- exed to a map reference. “This would not _e difficult because digital mapping tech- iques are now very advanced,” he adds. [e 1S convinced the selling of so much use- 11 knowledge would turn the Land Regis- ry _into a highly profitable billion-pound usiness. Certainly in other parts of the world there the registry has recently been com- [“t_°1'1Sed. the number of inquiries has mul- iplied astonishingly. Professor Peter Dale, /ho runs the Department of Land Survey- rig at East London Polytechnic, noted that vhen the registry in Adelaide in Australia vas recently computerised, the yearly level if 7,000 in 7 4,000 Eac ' y. e same appene in Sweden in 1987. So who, if anyone, is lobbying for secre- zy? Polls carried out three years ago showed that most professionals in the property world and most members of the public want the Land Registry opened as soon as possible. However, more than half the lawyers polled wanted to keep it closed because registration represents a substan- tial part of their conveyancing business. The Country Landowners’ Association, with its 49,000 members who own 80 per cent of agricultural land in Britain, is equally obdurate. To them, land ownership is a private matter and “not something for every busybody in the country to get their hands on”, as one member sniffed unhelpfully. It is believed that the owners of some of the great estates, which have been put into overseas trusts to avoid inheritance and other taxes, would not like it publicly known that they are in fact registered in Panama or Switzerland. There is also the very real fear that information revealed by the Registry might be used for company mail shots. Privately, a lot of developers recognise that an open land market might reveal a great deal more land available for develop- ment than we are aware of at present. As a result, the value of land itself might drop as it became less scarce, with the knock-on effect that the price of houses would slip too.