UK land ownership Archived Message
Posted by Diderot44 on April 19, 2019, 12:44 pm, in reply to "It's the kind of insanity that's 'not a story' according to defensive filters: and if past 1st layer"
I believe that the Shrubsole book dramatically understates the concentration of land ownership by a truly tiny elite group of aristocratic families, landed gentry and corporate interests (frequently owned and controlled by the former). Kevin Cahill's comprehensive 2001 study of land ownership "Who owns Britain?", clearly evinced that some 40,000 families own around 50% of all the land in the country, with nearly 75% held by just 189,000 families. Urban, suburban/rural settlements and road infrastructure combined, only represented 11% of the existing land usage, with the balance being national parks (11%) and liminal acreage (beaches, seashore, etc) 3%. Furthermore, when the Land Registry Act was set up in 1925, large estates owned by the aristocratic elite were "grandfathered" in, meaning that this demographically tiny group pay zero estate tax and in many cases, actually end up getting substantial tax credits via agricultural subsidies, etc. http://www.labourland.org/downloads/papers/WhoOwnsPaper.pdf https://www.newstatesman.com/life-and-society/2011/03/million-acres-land-ownership
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