HM Land Registry Wants to Open Up Who Owns the Land: What's Proposed and What We Said

What's being proposed

These are proposals, not decisions. Thresholds, fees and timings are all still open.

1. A free open dataset of owners of "significant land holdings"

HM Land Registry already publishes free datasets of land owned by UK and overseas companies. The new proposal would add a dataset naming the owners of larger freehold holdings, whoever they are, above a minimum size. The options in the consultation are 0.5, 1, 5 or 10 hectares. For scale, a football pitch is about 0.7 hectares.

It also asks whether titles that include a home should have a higher threshold, to protect people's privacy.

2. Free access to title registers for company-owned and larger holdings

The consultation proposes that anyone could view the title register for free, with controls such as usage limits, for:

• land in the UK and overseas companies datasets (around 16% of titles, covering around 30% of land), and
• land in the new significant land holdings dataset (about 1 to 5% of properties, covering roughly 50 to 65% of land, depending on the threshold).

Official copies used to buy, sell or mortgage land would still be charged for.

3. Free access for the public sector, and a route for public interest users

Councils, enforcement agencies and other public bodies would get free access to all title registers for their work. Other users acting in the public interest, such as journalists, researchers and charities, could apply for similar access case by case.

4. Completing the register

Roughly a tenth of the land in England and Wales is still unregistered, much of it agricultural. In the long term, the consultation proposes that land would normally need to be registered to receive government funding for land-based activities.

5. Safeguards for people at risk

HM Land Registry would get powers to hide or restrict information where publishing it creates a significant risk of harm, for example to survivors of domestic abuse or people facing stalking or threats.

A second, separate consultation proposes simplifying some registration fees (Scale 2, for transfers of equity and mortgages). It does not change the fees for official copies, title plans or searches.

What it would mean for land buyers

For most people buying a field, paddock, woodland or plot at auction, this would be good news.

The first question any buyer should ask is who actually owns the land, and whether that matches the person selling it. Today the answer means finding the right title and paying for the register. The proposals would make that check free and quick for much of the land that comes up for sale.

Free registers would also show the things that cause buyers the most trouble: restrictive covenants, restrictions on selling, mortgages, rights of way and, often, what the owner paid. In the plots our customers ask us to check, these are where most problems turn up, and most of them are already on the register before anyone buys.

What it would mean for landowners

More visibility brings more risk of fraud, particularly for land with no mortgage and nobody living on it. Whatever happens with the consultation, if you own land we'd recommend signing up for HM Land Registry's free Property Alert service. It tells you if someone applies to change the register for land you're monitoring.

What we said in our response

We support the direction of the proposals. Our main points were:

• Set the threshold at 0.5 hectares, with a higher threshold of 5 hectares for titles that include a home. We looked at the 515 plots our customers have asked us to check. The median was 0.68 hectares, about one football pitch. A 0.5 hectare threshold would cover 55% of them, 5 hectares only 17% and 10 hectares just 11%. A high threshold would leave out most of the land that private individuals actually buy and sell. A separate threshold for titles with a home protects privacy without excluding working farms.
• Include the title number and INSPIRE ID in the dataset. At present nothing in HM Land Registry's open data links a mapped parcel to its title number. Adding that link would make the data far more useful, and would cut the number of index map searches HM Land Registry has to handle.
• Don't publish private individuals' addresses. A name and the land are enough for almost every legitimate use. The address adds most of the privacy and fraud risk.
• Use publication to protect owners. Encourage owners in the dataset to sign up for Property Alert, and let authorised services set up alerts on an owner's behalf.
• Make free access work for the services people already use, including through HM Land Registry's Business Gateway, and don't treat fetching one register for one customer as "bulk extraction".
• Apply safeguards at source, in every channel, so a hidden record is hidden everywhere. Keep them for people at real risk, not for companies wanting to avoid scrutiny.
• Scan older documents when they're first requested. Many historical registers, old deeds and some title plans are still only available on paper, by post. Scanning each one when it's first requested would mean everyone after gets it electronically.
• Don't fund free access by raising fees for the private individuals and small businesses who pay for official copies.

We sell official copies of registers ourselves, at cost. Free registers would mean customers buy fewer from us, and we think the reforms are right anyway.

How to respond

The consultation is open to everyone until 22 December 2026. You don't have to answer every question.

• Consultation: the future of access to HM Land Registry information
• Consultation: restructuring HM Land Registry fees

HM Land Registry says responses are treated in confidence and that nothing identifying you will be included in its published analysis.

In the meantime

None of this is in force yet. To find out who owns a piece of land today, see our guide to finding out who owns land in England, or our guide on finding out who owns the freehold of your flat. If you'd rather we did it for you, our Owner Lookup finds the right title and sends you the official register for £7.50, and a Plot Report checks a plot's planning, flood, access and title risks before you buy.

We'll update this article when HM Land Registry publishes its response.