Who Owns England: Companies & corporate bodies
On 7 November 2017, the Land Registry of England & Wales for the first time released details of 3.5 million land titles owned by UK corporate bodies - councils, UK companies, housing associations and more. The map below shows 1.8 million titles mapped to approximate postcode location. Mapped by Anna Powell-Smith. Read the blog post or scroll down for more details.
Why is this data significant? It's never been made public before. We know from our research that companies and the public sector own around a third of England and Wales.
Why don't you have exact locations, or property boundaries? The Land Registry data release does not include any geographic boundaries, just addresses. Because UK addresses are an expensive privatised dataset, I can't map their exact locations. Instead, I use postcode locations where available - these are approximate.
Why have you only mapped half the titles? About half the addresses don't include a postcode - typically these are vague addresses like "Land north of Stansfield Road, Wigan". I'm mapping approximate locations for these, using an OpenStreetMap-based geocoder, but it takes time.
What kinds of organisation are included? UK companies (2.1 million titles); councils and local authorities (600,000 titles); corporate bodies like the Church and government departments (240,000 titles); housing associations, industrial and provident societies, unincorporated associations, cooperatives. There are more than half a million organisations in the dataset. Charities and trusts are unfortunately excluded. See the full documentation.
Can I find property owned by a particular company? Coming soon!
How can I find out more about the company that owns next door? Use Companies House. Find a company by name, then check "People > Persons of Significant Control" to see who controls it.
Who are you? Mapped by Anna Powell-Smith at Who Owns England. Read the blog post, learn more about us or get in touch.
HM Land Registry Corporate and Commercial Ownership Data as of 8 November 2017. Information produced by HM Land Registry © Crown copyright 2017. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2017. Contains Royal Mail data © Royal Mail copyright and Database right 2017. Map may contain errors; use with caution; no liability accepted for errors.
Thanks 💕 to everyone, inside and outside government, who worked to open up this data for the first time. Thanks 💕 to Mapbox for the GL JS library and for supporting our work. Get in touch.