"More than a third of Britain’s land is still in the hands of a tiny group of aristocrats, according to the most extensive ownership survey in nearly 140 years... A group of 36,000 individuals – only 0.6 per cent of the population – own 50 per cent of rural land...
Their assets account for 20million out of Britain’s 60million acres of land, and the researchers estimate that the vast majority is actually owned by a wealthy core of just 1,200 aristocrats and their relatives. The top ten individual biggest owners control a staggering total of more than a million acres between them.
These figures have been uncovered by the ‘Who Owns Britain?’ report by Country Life Magazine*, thought to be the most extensive survey of its type undertaken since 1872."
Daily Mail article here.
* I can't track down the actual report itself, but it would appear to say much the same as Kevin Cahill's excellent book from 2001, called... er... Who owns Britain?
UPDATE: as some of the commenters point out, it is misleading to look at land ownership in acreage terms, because 1 acre farmland is worth £5,000 but one acre of suburban land is worth £500,000 to £1 million; and one acre of bare land in town centres can be worth up to £70 million.
Be that as it may, the Daily Mail article includes a handy table showing values rather than acreage, and these tables (which the chap from ALTER emailed to me) suggest that land 'ownership' in value terms is just as unevenly distributed as it is in acreage terms; in any event, far less evenly distributed than incomes.
Bluesky thinking?
3 minutes ago
14 comments:
I just ordered this book.
Looking forward to seeing the details within.
CR.
Betcha you they endorsed the fiction that the Crown Estate is the personal property of the Windsors. Betcha.
P.S. Betcha the figures are dominated by the miles and miles of bugger all that comprise The Highlands.
Oh yeah, and the Southern Uplands too.
CR, me too.
D, sure, the figures are skewed if you just look at acreage, regardless of values; but if you look at values, the figures are just as skewed. The normal 80/20 rules does not apply, it's more like 95/5 (if you minus off mortgage debts from most people's few hundred square yards of suburban land).
Yes but this is just agricultural land, which it worth so little it probably wouldn't be worth subjecting it to LVT. What about the really valuable stuff, built-on land, who owns that?
I'm keen to read some decent books with proper figures in them. Progress & poverty is great as a theory piece, but he doesn't give numbers. I read The Silver Bullet by Fred Harrison and was greatly disappointed. It read like a slanging match.
Any recommendations?
Seeing as how most of this was acquired by patronage following violence we could go and take it away on the same basis.
Or we could LVT it - as a marginaly less confrontational solution.
So they own a lot of land. Someone has to own it. Why not them?
Anon, see what Lola says.
Further, this concentration of land ownership is quite directly the cause of this financial crisis/recession and all those that went before them (ever 18 years or so).
"Seeing as how most of this was acquired by patronage following violence we could go and take it away on the same basis."
L, are you subscribing to Mark's "We wuz all robbed by the Normans" myth? The amount of land in this country that has not been bought and sold at some time since the Norman conquest is very small indeed. Added to this is the fact that not all Saxon landowners were dispossessed by Normans. So what if all titles trace back to an act of dispossession? If I go to the police auction and buy an unclaimed stolen bicycle, or unwittingly buy a bicycle that was stolen and sold several owners ago, does this make it OK for someone to steal it off me?
B, it's not a myth at all, it is quite true. As the statistics show, about 80% of the surface area (probably far less by value) has passed down by direct inheritance unbroken for a thousand years.
Before they came along, all the land in each kingdom 'belonged' to the King, and everybody paid rent accordingly, and the King kept a bit for himself and spent the rest on 'core functions', being mainly army and law and order, and a bit was chipped out to the destitute. A bit like Georgism :-)
Anyways, this is irrelevant. The point is that land 'ownership' and 'the state' are synonymous. You can't have one without the other. This applies just as much to the USA or Australia as it does in the UK.
"Before they came along, all the land in each kingdom 'belonged' to the King, and everybody paid rent accordingly, and the King kept a bit for himself and spent the rest on 'core functions', being mainly army and law and order, and a bit was chipped out to the destitute. A bit like Georgism :-)"
So in essence in the days this nation was at its most powerful, we had a system not too dissimilar from what you propose a shift to? Of course with the poor dished out rather less back then but poverty is a bigger issue of concern to the general public these days.
SW, yes of course, I wouldn't propose stuff that hadn't been tried and tested and shown to work (in this or in other countries, at whatever time in history).
As the statistics show, about 80% of the surface area (probably far less by value) has passed down by direct inheritance unbroken for a thousand years.
I'd be very interested to see those statistics, can you send me a URL?
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