Who really owns land? A briefing on trusts and property data
Our answers to many socially important questions depend on us knowing who owns what land: can a house be built here? has the UK successfully frozen Vladimir Putin’s assets? who is responsible for the abandoned house on my road? was this property bought with illegally obtained money?
In England and Wales, if the land in question is owned solely by an individual or company, details of its beneficial owner - the person who controls and benefits from the land - are published by the Land Registry, so our questions can be answered.
But if a private trust is involved in the property’s ownership chain, the public (and sometimes even the police) cannot find out who the beneficial owner is. This gives criminals an obvious incentive to use trusts. It also creates problems for the housing market, and means communities cannot always find out who owns the land around them.
For these reasons, the Government has opened a consultation on the transparency of land ownership involving trusts. The consultation recognises that there are benefits to improving transparency, but also that there is a long-standing tradition that trust ownership is private.
We’ve published a short briefing explaining why data on property ownership is important, the current state of the data, the issues raised, and making a straightforward proposal.
We argue that owners who use trusts should be treated just like any other owners for transparency purposes, without special exemptions:
It is now possible for the public to discover the beneficial owner of any registered land in England and Wales, or all the land owned by any UK or overseas company - as long as trusts are not part of the ownership chain.
But when trusts are involved, beneficial ownership information is largely opaque to the public, and sometimes even to the police.
It is unclear why trusts are granted this privacy shield, where individuals and companies are not. This disparity gives criminals an incentive to own property via trusts. It also affects the housing market and conceals matters of public interest.
The Government should tackle this by making data on the beneficial ownership of land owned via trusts available on the same terms as for other types of owner - and with the same protections. This means that where companies are involved, the information should be fully public: where only individuals are involved, the information should be paywalled.
This would be straightforward to implement, would maintain the privacy and safety of individuals, would help prevent the use of UK property for money laundering, and would support local communities and the housing market.
The Government is seeking consultation responses by 21 February - we’ll publish our formal response shortly. In the meantime, see our briefing. If you’re affected by any of these issues, please do get in touch!