Half of all land in England is owned by just 25k owners

13 comments

1. with 60m acres in the uk, thats an average of 1200 each for those in the top 25k, leaving about half an acre per person in the bottom 67mil

2. Theres me thinking the king owned all of it. How many of these land owners are reside in the uk? And who owns the most?

3. Winston Churchill:

   >Roads are made, streets are made, railway services are improved, electric light turns night into day, electric trams glide swiftly to and fro, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains – and all the while the landlord sits still. Every one of those improvements is effected by the labour and cost of other people. Many of the most important are effected at the cost of the municipality and of the ratepayers. To not one of those improvements does the land monopolist, as a land monopolist, contribute, and yet by every one of them the value of his land is sensibly enhanced. He renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare; he contributes nothing even to the process from which his own enrichment is derived.

   >If the land were occupied by shops or by dwellings, the municipality at least would secure the rates upon them in aid of the general fund, but the land may be unoccupied, undeveloped, it may be what is called “ripening” – ripening at the expense of the whole city, of the whole country for the unearned increment of its owner. Roads perhaps have to be diverted to avoid this forbidden area. The merchant going to his office, the artisan going to his work, have to make a detour or pay a tram fare to avoid it. The citizens are losing their chance of developing the land, the city is losing its rates, the State is losing its taxes which would have accrued if the natural development had taken place, and that share has to be replaced at the expense of the other ratepayers and taxpayers; and the nation as a whole is losing in the competition of the world – the hard and growing competition of the world – both in time and money.

   >And all the while the land monopolist has only to sit still and watch complacently his property multiplying in value, sometimes manifold, without either effort or contribution on his part. And that is justice!

   >The manufacturer proposing to start a new industry, proposing to erect a great factory offering employment to thousands of hands, is made to pay such a price for his land that the purchase price hangs round the neck of his whole business, hampering his competitive power in every market, clogging him far more than any foreign tariff in his export competition, and the land values strike down through the profits of the manufacturer on to the wages of the workman. The railway company wishing to build a new line finds that the price of land which yesterday was only rated at its agricultural value has risen to a prohibitive figure the moment it was known that the new line was projected, and either the railway is not built, or, if it is, is built only on terms which largely transfer to the landowner the profits which are due to the shareholders and the advantages which should have accrued to the travelling public.

   >It does not matter where you look or what examples you select, you will see that every form of enterprise, every step in material progress, is only undertaken after the land monopolist has skimmed the cream off for himself. And everywhere today the man or the public body that wishes to put land to its highest use is forced to pay a preliminary fine in land values to the man who is putting it to an inferior use, and in some cases to no use at all. All comes back to the land value, and its owner for the time being is able to levy his toll upon all other forms of wealth and upon every form of industry.

   And this is from the book “Daylight Robbery” by Dominic Frisby, I think it would be a really good system:

   >Imagine two identical plots in a city centre. One is undeveloped scrub, the other has a magnificent building on top. They would both be taxed at an identical rate. The only thing that is considered is the value of the land in its unimproved state. It could be £10 million house, but we are only concerned with the unimproved value of the land beneath. The wealth that has come as a result of the building should be kept by the developer who took the risks, or the new owner who maintains it. But if the undeveloped plot appreciates in value due simply to the fact that the city is growing and more people want to live in the area, then that appreciation is unearned wealth and some of it should be shared. Often land appreciates because taxes have been spent building a superfast railway nearby. That gain is not due to the endeavour of the owner of the plot, but because of some kind of communal activity, so the unearned gain should be shared.

4. I thought king Charles owned it all? He Is the largest land owner in the world

5. Yeah, so what? WTF would I do with 10 acres of low-grade farmland? Unless an incoming government wants to tax land ownership, it’s of academic interest.

   This is one of those findings that sounds like it ought to be significant but probably isn’t. We already know which dukes own the posh parts of London.

6. Well ofcourse, large farms, park trusts, city councils, churches etc.

   The normal person does not have the skill, funds nor want to cultivate land.

7. 3% or thereabouts of the country is bleeding golf courses. They take up more land than all of the private gardens.

8. Surprised it’s that high tbh; i’m sure they could easily made the statistic more shocking by being like “a quarter of all the land is owned by 20 people” or some shit along those lines.

9. of course it is. some inbred wankers ancestor stabbed someone in the back and another inbred ‘royal’ handed over thousands of acres in gratitude. the whole system of monarchy, class etc is rotten to the core and should be disbanded instantly. the only good thing the french did was lop the heads of them fucking chinless leeches.

10. So In Ni I own my house and the land on it their is no lease hold on it at all its clearly stated in the deeds.

11. And that’s why Britain is the only country remaining that still uses the leasehold system. The freeholders include some phenomenally wealthy and influential people, like the Duke of Westminster, and the royals themselves

12. Lets not act like land is the issue in our productivity problem, and housing issue.

13. Lets not act like land is the issue in our productivity problem, and housing issue.