12 land ownership in the united kingdom - trends preferences and future

7/30/2019 12 Land Ownership in the United Kingdom - Trends Preferences and Future

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Land Use Policy 26S (2009) S103S108

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Land Use Policy

j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c a t e / l a n d u s e p o l

Land ownership in the United Kingdom: Trends, preferences and future

challenges

Robert Home

Anglia Law School, Anglia Ruskin University, Bishop Hall Lane, Chelmsford, Essex CM1 1SF, United Kingdom

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:

Received 13 August 2009

Accepted 18 August 2009

Keywords:

Land ownership

Land use

Population pressure

United Kingdom

Home ownership

Land markets

Spatial planning

a b s t r a c t

The relation between population, land use and land ownership has been little explored by academicresearchers, and the redistribution of land ownership has largely disappeared from political debate. This

article, while recognising the fragmented and limited data available on land ownership, seeks to sum-

marisethe broad changes in land ownershipduring thepastcentury,distinguishing thethreemaintypes:

private,state andcommunal tenure, aswell asfreeholdand leaseholdtenures. Afterconsideringthe effects

of the spatial planning system upon land use, it addresses some critical emerging issues, such as envi-

ronmental protection, risk assessment, and housing land supply, and suggests some future directions for

land ownership and the role of the state.

2009 Queens Printer and Controller of HMSO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction

The UK is one of the most crowded countries in the EuropeanUnion, and indeed the world (see Table 1). This means pressure

upon land and land use, and makes it especially difficult to find

land for new development. Unlike much of continental Europe, the

UK has experienced little major redistribution of land ownership

since the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century, apart

from the temporary growth of state land ownership in the 20th

century, some of which was reversed during the 1980s.

Lobbyists and journalists (Cahill, 2001; Norton-Taylor, 1982;

Wightman, 1996) have criticised the continuing concentration of

landed wealth in the UK, but the relationships between land own-

ership, population andland use have been littleexplored, while the

planning system, which allocates land uses, is largely blind to mat-

ters of land ownership. This article seeks to provide an overview of

the main changes and continuities in land ownership over the pastcentury, and what future changes can be expected in the coming

years. The issues to be explored include the role of the planning

systemin securing sufficient development land for societys needs,

changes in the existing housing stock, possible greater government

intervention to acquire more land, and new legal and fiscal mea-

sures.

While the Government Office for Science commissioned this review, the views

are those of the author(s), are independent of Government, and do not constitute

Government policy.

E-mail address: [email protected] .

Data sources and limitations

Published information on land ownership is scattered amongnumerous data sources, which are seemingly designed to make

comparison and analysis difficult (Goodchild and Munton, 1984,

p. 3). Apart from the Land Registries (discussed below), among

governmentbodiesthe Departmentof Communities and Local Gov-

ernment (DCLG) holds datasets on housing and construction rates

for England, the Statistics Authority on demographic trends, the

Valuation Agency (VOA) on land prices, and the Department of

Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) on land use change

and agricultural holdings, again only for England. Important non-

governmental sources include the Royal Institution of Chartered

Surveyors (RICS) and the Council of Mortgage Lenders. There have

been major recent advances in the technical infrastructure: global

positioning satellite (GPS) systems collect and update geo-spatial

data with great precision, the Ordnance Survey has digitised itsentire map base, and the Gazetteer Act 1997 requires local author-

ities to maintain sophisticated local land databases using BS7666

(Wyatt, 1999).

Land ownership, although sometimes regarded as a continuum

or spectrum, can be divided into three basic types:

Private property, held by individuals and other legal entities. The

state guarantees the right to property (under the First Protocol

of the European Convention on Human Rights), but such rights

may be removed by compulsory purchase, and are limited by the

statutory planning system. Within the past decade the potential

0264-8377/$ see front matter 2009 Queens Printer and Controller of HMSO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2009.08.013
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/02648377http://www.elsevier.com/locate/landusepolmailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_10/dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2009.08.013http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_10/dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2009.08.013mailto:[email protected]://www.elsevier.com/locate/landusepolhttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/02648377


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S104 R. Home / Land Use Policy 26S (2009) S103S108

Table 1

Selected country population densities (2005).

Country Population (m) Land area (000 sq km) Population density (pp sq km)

UK 60.7 242.5 246

Netherlands 16.4 41.5 395

Belgium 10.4 30.5 341

Germany 82.7 357.0 232

Japan 127.4 377.9 337

Poland 38.5 312.7 123France 60.5 551.5 110

Spain 43.0 506.0 85

World 6700 148,940 45

Source: Official statistics. Note: 1sqkm= 100ha.

of private land tenure security for reducing global poverty has

been promoted, notably by De Soto (2000), and by international

agencies through the UN-Habitat Global Campaign on Secure

Tenure, the Global Land Tools Network, and the Commission for

Legal Empowerment of the Poor. State land, controlled by public bodies, which may be central,

regional or local authorities, or parastatal bodies. A range of land rights that can be loosely categorised as commu-

nal or third sector (terminologies are debated).

Land tenureis also distinguished legally as being eitherfreehold

or leasehold. The Law of Property Acts 192225 converted feudal

land tenure into a simpler system, creating the fee simple absolute

in possession (freehold), andthe term of years absolute,a leasehold

interest for a specified period of time.

The prime sourceof land ownershipdata in theUnited Kingdom

is the statutory register of title, held respectively by the Land Reg-

istry(Englandand Wales) (LREW), the Registers of Scotland,and the

Land Registers of Northern Ireland. None of these have geographi-

cally comprehensive data on land ownership (although they have

that aim), since all land is not yet registered, nor do they publish

aggregated data, for example on types of ownership and average

sizes of land ownershipparcels.Thus we do notknow theexactdis-

tributionof ownershipbetween thethreemaintenure types.Whilethe LREW has been open to public inspection since 1990, it allows

inquiries on individual land parcels for a fee per inquiry, making

a search of the register expensive for often limited information,

while local authority records e.g. the planning register have to be

searched separately.

LREW (2008a) boasts of having the largest online transactional

[my italics] database globally, and in 2008 recorded 4.5 million

transactions, including debt and mortgage charges secured against

property, and 11 million enquiries. In 2008 it claimed to have 21.6

million titles registered, covering some 64 percent of the total land

area of England and Wales. It estimates that a million titles are yet

to be registered, mostlylargeprivate estates, and, with compulsory

legal triggers for first registration introduced by the Land Regis-

tration Act 2002, expects to complete the register within 10 years.

Historical trends

One can identify the following trends in UK land ownership

over the past century: the growth of home ownership, the survival

(mainly in the countryside) of concentrated hereditary land own-

ership, the decline of leasehold tenure, the expansion (and then

contraction) of state land ownership, and the growth of legal forms

of communal ownership.

Home ownership

The biggest change in UK land ownership in the 20th century

was the growth of home ownership, mostly of separate dwellings

on small land parcels of less than 0.1ha. The largest single category

of registered land-owners are private home-owners, represent-

ing perhaps two-thirds of the registered land titles (although the

statistics are complicated by multi-storey ownerships, buy-to-let

property and otherfactors).Owner-occupiers increased theirshare

of the housing stock in England and Wales from 10 percent in 1914

to 71 percent in 2000 (Social Trends, 2000). Councils controlled

a third of the housing stock in the 1970s, but right-to-buy legis-

lation by the Thatcher Government resulted in 1.6 million homes

switching from council to home ownership in 198094 (Balchin

and Rhoden, 1998, p. 69).

During the 20th century the total dwelling stock grew by some

three times, from 7 million to 20 million. Four million houses,

2.9 million of them private, were built in the 20 years between

the two World Wars (Saunders, 1990, p. 26). This growth was

accompanied by a fall in average household size from 4.6 persons-

per-household in 1901 to 2.4 a century later (England and Wales).

That fall reflected smaller family sizes, a contraction in the active

period of child-bearing, and also the decline of non-family house-

hold members, such as resident domestic servants and lodgers

(Balchin and Rhoden, 1998, p. 70).

This growth in the housing stock has been accompanied by a

trend to smaller homes. The average floorspace of a new dwelling

in England and Wales now the lowest in Europe at 76 sq m (com-pared with 92 in Japan and 115 in the Netherlands, countries with

higher population pressures). For all dwellings (new and existing)

the figure was 85sq m comparedwith98 inthe Netherlands (Evans

and Hartwich, 2005). British homes are fitting more rooms into the

same space, and the older housing survives because it is bigger

and more adaptable (Bartlett, 2002). The density of new housing

is also rising, and in 2007 was 44 dwellings per hectare, compared

with the garden city planners ideal a century earlier of twelve to

the acre, which equals 30 per ha (Land Use Change, 2009). Flats,

maisonettes and apartments have a growing share of the housing

stock in England (lower in Wales); it is currently about a fifth, up

from 7 percent in 1964 when it was mostly council-owned (DCLG

Statistics).

Survival of large private land ownership

Through the 19th and into the 20th century the land question

(basically feudal tenure and the concentration of landed wealth)

was a major politicalissue, contributing to the Liberal election land-

slide of1906.Whena comprehensivesurvey of land ownershipwas

undertaken in 1873, 7000 individuals were found to own some

80 percent of the land area of Britain. After the First World War,

however, land became a forgotten controversy (Packer, 2001), fol-

lowing the rise in home ownership, the break-up of many large

estates, state provisionof housing andsmall-holdings, andthe land

law reforms of 192225.

At the beginning of the 21st century, notwithstanding the

growth of home ownership, landed wealth is still concentrated


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R. Home / Land Use Policy 26S (2009) S103S108 S105

in relatively few hands (Blinkhorn and Gibson, 1991; Thompson,

1990). An estimated 200,000 individuals (mostly comprising the

monarchy, aristocracy and gentry) own about two-thirds of the

land, and Norton-Taylor (1982) estimated that some 1700 individ-

uals owned a third of all land.

State land ownership

The 20th century saw the expansion, and then contraction, of

statelandownershipintheUK.Atitspeak,duringtheSecondWorld

War,the state owned a sixth ofthe UKlandarea.In reactionagainst

the post-War socialist land redistribution in many countries, neo-

liberal ideology has promoted the transfer of much state land into

private hands and greater transnational capital flows into prop-

erty. In the 1970s, there was academic research (e.g. Massey and

Catalano, 1978) into land ownership, linked politically to post-War

Labour governments attempts to control development land. But

the Conservative government of 197997 drove land ownership

off political and academic agendas in the UK, and the subsequent

Labour governments after 1997 did not restore it.

Massey and Catalano (1978) estimated that the state then

owned some 19 percent of all land in Great Britain (including cen-

tralgovernment 79percent,and localauthorities7 percent), while

Clark (1981) separately found that 17 percent of the land area of

Scotland was owned by public bodies (mostly central government,

the largest being the Forestry Commission). In 1984 registers of

public agency land recorded 43,000ha of potential development

land (Howes, 1984), much of which was transferred to the private

sector in the 1980s. Currently the largest government owners are

the Defence Estate and the Forestry Commission (see Table 2).

Communal land ownership

Customary or communal land was until recently regarded in

global discourses on land as a vestige of the past bound for extinc-

tion. Butit is nowbeingrediscovered andpromoted. In recentyears

there has been increased UK policy interest in community owner-

ship or management of land and buildings, and the Quirk Review

(2007) recommended that community development trusts should

become more mainstream. Common land, while mostly privately

owned, has legal protection, with statutory registers maintained

by local authorities (Clayden, 2003). Large communal land-owners

include the National Trust, the Royal Society for the Protection of

Birds, and the Wildlife Trusts (see Table 2).

Recent legislation is facilitating forms of communal ownership

and management. The Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000

increased public access to land (the right to roam) (Shoard, 1987);

the Scottish Land Reform Act 2003 abolished feudal land tenure

Table 2

Some large land-owners in UK.

Owner Hectares (000s)

Common land 550

Aristocracy (26 Dukes) 400

National Trust (inc Scottish NT) 325

Monarchy 260

Forestry Commission (England) 250

Defence Estate 160

Pension funds 200

Royal Society for Protection of Birds 130

County farms 150

Wildlife Trusts 90

Local authorities 90

Woodland Trust 20

Sources: Cahill (2005), Massey and Catalano (1978), Norton-Taylor (1982), institu-

tional websites. Note: Common land is privately owned but protected.

Table 3

Extent of major land uses and policies in UK.

Land use % land area

Agricultural 73.9

Urban 14.4

Forest and woodland 11.6

Policy designations (categories overlap)

Green Belts (England only) 12.6

Special Areas of Conservation 10.3SSSI 9.9

AONB 9.6

Sources: DEFRA, DCLG (2008).

and empowered communities to acquire land with the benefit of

charitable status and stamp dutyexemption (Wightman,1996) and

the Commonhold Act 2002 introduced condominium ownership,

mainly intended for apartment buildings (LREW, 2008b). These

new tenure forms are making limited impact upon land-ownership

patterns, but can be expected to grow.

Tenure shifts

The 20th century saw a decline in leasehold tenure in dif-ferent sectors of landed property, and there have been more

purchases of land by property companies, insurance companies

and pension funds, including foreign investors (Lizieri and Kutsch,

2006). Business property has generally been provided through

medium-term leases from specialist property companies (Scott,

1987). Recently the large food retailers have expanded by acquir-

ing land and owning their own stores, using their cash resources

to find suitable out-of-town sites, obtain planning permission,

and provide infrastructure. Tesco now owns 70 percent of its

sites, and J Sainsbury 50 percent, while Marks and Spencer has

always had a policy of owning rather than renting (corporate web-

site).

In the housing sector, leasehold enfranchisement allowed flat

lessees to acquire freeholds andsuperiorinterests(a million privateflats were still held on long leases in 1991), while the introduction

of shortholdtenancies in 1996 encouraged theconstruction of buy-

to-let flats. By 2009 there were 2.6 million privately rented homes

(DCLG statistics).

In the agricultural sector, tenant farming declined from 90 per-

cent of the land area in 1873 to 35 percent in 1994, and the total

number of farmers and farm businesses is falling, with exit rates

exceeding entry rates. This trend reflects the long-term restructur-

ing of agriculture and short-term problems of low profitability and

uncertainty (ADAS, 2004; Northfield, 1979).

Land and the planning system

The land use planning system, a creature of the 20th century,has no direct role in land ownership, yet its statutory responsi-

bility for allocating land use, and hence land value, is central. Its

concern with land ownership is limited to matching allocation to

thesupply of development land (Goodchildand Munton, 1984), but

compulsoryacquisition underplanning powers is rare,constrained

by compensation costs and public disapproval. There is little polit-

ical pressure for redistribution of land ownership, although large

land-owners can enjoy huge windfall gains from growing develop-

ment land values (Table 3).

Development land supply

The planning system operates to allocate land use, mediating

between powerful contesting forces, particularly those protecting


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Table 4

Agricultural holdings by size (2008).

England Wales Scotland N. Ireland

Number of holdings (000) 187.9 36.5 50.2 28.5

Average size (all holdings) (ha) 30.8 16.4 21.2 18.5

% total area on holdings of 100 hectares and over 68.5 54.5 86.1 28.8

Number of holdings 200 hectares and over 5.1 0.2 0.7 0.1

Source: DEFRA.

the countryside and the environment and those demanding new

development. Policy favours development on brownfield rather

than greenfield sites, in town rather than out of town (through

the sequential test). Current planning thinking, driven by the new

imperatives of climate change, reducing carbon emissions and pro-

tecting habitats, is focussed more on higher housing densities, less

car dependency andcompact cities, butthe existence of millions of

low-density suburban private house-plots makes a major physical

reshaping of settlement patterns difficult.

The figures for future housing provision, derived from demo-

graphic forecasts, are themain driver fordevelopment land release

through the planning system, and are imposing unrealisticallyhightargets for localdevelopment plans. Supply constraints have driven

up thepriceof residential building land in England andWalesmore

than ten-fold in the past 25 years (174,000 per hectare in 1984 to

2.9 million in 2009: VOA figures). Such high land values, which

translate into high prices for new housing, create difficulties in

providing affordable housing through Section 106 agreements.

Environmental and countryside protection

Public disapproval of greenfield development is reflected in an

array of planning policies restricting development in the coun-

tryside, supported by an enhanced planning enforcement regime.

Probably the most known and popular planning policy is the Green

Belt, which prohibits all inappropriate development over some 13percent of the land area of England.

Agriculture was for most of the 20th century largely exempt

from planning control, and the continuing concentration of land

ownership in the UK is reflected in the relatively large size of agri-

cultural land-holdings (see Table 4). The price of agricultural land

with vacant possession rose by about three times from 1990 to

2008 (VOA data).

Long-established policies to protect countryside, landscape and

heritage are being reinforced by a growing array of European

Union legal instruments. The Habitats Directive has resulted in the

Natura 2000 network of Special Areas of Conservation, while mea-

sures to conserve water resources have resulted in river-basin and

coastal management schemes that restrict new development. The

greater frequency of flooding is affecting land use allocation, withsome 1015 percent of land in England located in flood-risk areas

(although 10 percent of new dwellings in 2007 were still being

built within such areas) (Environment Agency, 2009). As the Envi-

ronment Agency warns:

Thelatest UK climate changedatashowsthatthe risk offlooding

and coastal erosion will continue to increase in future due to

rising sealevelsand more frequent andheavy storms, and there

are important decisions for us all to take about how to manage

these risks to protect people, communities, businesses and the

economy in future (Environment Agency, 2009).

The future of land ownership

Survey findings on public attitudes, perceptions and aspirations

towards property offer some pointers to future land-ownership

trends. The recent severe shocks to the economic and financialsystem make the task of identifying future land-ownership trends

more than usually speculative, as do the uncertainties of acceler-

ating climate change. Greater transparency and availability of data

on land ownership, and the achievement of a comprehensive land

register, would be helpful.

Pressures on land

Underlying population pressures upon land will continue. The

UKs population passed 60 million in 2005, and is projected to pass

70 million by 2031 (Population Trends, 2009). Table 5 shows offi-

cial projections of population densities. The South-East is the most

densely populated English region (394 in 1987, rising to 423 in

2006), and the South-West the least (193 in 1987, 203 in 2006).Such population pressures create demands for new devel-

opment, and strain the planning system. Disputes over land

can be expected to increase, both defences of private prop-

erty rights, and disputes between different levels of government

(local, regional, national and European). Among recent publi-

cised litigation can be cited the following: attempts by private

land-owners to force public investment in flood defences; local

authority objections to new imposed housing targets; disputes

over affordable housing in new development; NIMBY oppo-

sition to infrastructure, waste and energy projects; and the

defence of countryside and habitat designations against intrusive

development.

Home ownership

The dominance of home ownership is likely to continue.

Residential property transactions dominate the land market,

notwithstanding the recent recession: in England they numbered

Table 5

UK projected population densities (persons per sq km).

Popn. 1987 Density 1987 (pp sq km) Popn. 2006 Density 2006 Projected density 2056

UK 56.7 234 61.0 250 324

England 47.2 363 51.1 390 521

Wales 2.8 136 3.0 143 165

Scotland 5.1 65 5.1 66 67

N. Ireland 1.6 117 1.8 128 153

Sources: Parliamentary Written Answers 18 February 2008, Population Trends (2009).


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R. Home / Land Use Policy 26S (2009) S103S108 S107

1.7millionin 2006, fell to 900,000 in 2008,and areforecastto reach

700,000 in 2009 (LREW, 2008a).

The benefits of home ownership are confirmed by surveys.

Households in areas categorised as affluent family, mature home-

owning and affluent suburban and rural were most likely to

be satisfied with their area and accommodation, while those liv-

ing on council estates and low-income areas were least satisfied

(Social Trends). Home-owner equity is an important source of

credit (Smith and Searle, 2009).

But despite encouragement by successive Governments, desire

for home ownership appears to be in decline. A recent survey

foundthat only44 percent of 1825-year-olds favoured homeown-

ership (contrasting with 75 percent of those over 55), and that

respondents valued housing affordability and security ahead of

ownership (Shelter, 2009). The division by age is also reflected in

statistics on older households: four-fifths live in under-occupied

homes (compared with a third of all households), and most lived

in owner-occupied homes with over half owning outright. Of the

population aged 2034, a third of menand a fifth of women still live

with their parents, themain reasonbeingcitedas thelack of afford-

able housing. The affordability of home ownership is challengedby

the increase in mortgage repossessions (40,000 in 2008, expected

to rise to 75,000 in 2009). In the previous housing recession repos-

sessions peaked at 75,000 in 1991, and remained at around 50,000

for 5 years (Social Trends).

Future supply of development land

Surveys of public attitudes to property development in the UK

reveal growing resistance to new development. Private house-

building is opposed for reasons such as increased traffic, loss of

green space, effect on community character, and reducing prop-

erty values. The public is sceptical about government housing

targets, with three-quarters of those surveyed saying that these

were unrealistic. Government eco-town proposals were criticised

as the most ineffective way to tackle the housing crisis (SaintConsulting, 2009).

Pressure to protect ecosystems and environmental resources,

combined with flood-risk restrictions, can be expected to restrict

development land supply further in the future. The national target

that at least 60percent of newhomesshould be built on brownfield

land hasbeenexceeded:the 2006 figure was72 percent, upfrom 56

percent in 1997 (Land Use Change, 2008). Such levels are, however,

unlikely to be maintained because of the infrastructure costs of

servicing new sites.

The governments house-building plans seem unlikely to be

achieved for various reasons including the shrinking base of avail-

able development land, local opposition, and credit constraints

on the house-building industry. Annual housing starts after 1970

reached a peak of 350,000 in 1972, falling to about 200,000 in the1980s (the lowest being 160,000 in the recession of 199092), and

were 204,000 in 2007/8. Annualsocial housing starts, over 100,000

through the 1970s, fell below 40,000 in the1990s, andwere 24,000

in 2007/8, suggesting an under-supply of over a million affordable

units by 2016 (DCLG statistics).

One response to the under-supply of new housing through the

formal planning system couldcome fromself-helpprovision,which

is currently endorsed and supported internationally by De Soto

(2000). While speculative subdivisions of land were a feature of the

recent over-heated housing market (LREW, 2008c), the planning

system keeps a tight grip upon housing land release through the

local development framework and enforcement powers, making

it unlikely that significant housing gains will be achieved through

self-help.

Adaptation of existing housing stock

An under-supplyof new housing will have consequencesfor the

existing housing stock, as will the large contribution of housing to

carbon emissions. Among these could be demographic changes: a

reverse in the long-term decline in average household size; young

people deferring leaving home, and more three-generation house-

holds, allowing grandparents to be resident child-carers while the

middle generation goes out to work. Measures to reduce under-

occupation, especially in older homes, can be expected.They might

include fiscal incentives to older households to release equity for

shared occupation and ownership; more collective housing forms

(hostel accommodation for students and young adults, retirement

communities); further tax incentives to let rooms in ones home;

and attitudinal changes to lodging and multiple-generation house-

holds.

Physical adaptation and intensification of the existing hous-

ing stock can be encouraged through planning policy measures,

such as greater domestic permitted development rights; policies

to allow larger extensions and conversion of existing buildings;

greater diversity in the housing stock (e.g. through encouragement

of eco-homes,experimental building forms and more underground

space); and easier subdivision of larger plots.

Current stresses within the rental housing market can be

expected to result in greater regulation. The private rented sec-

tor has a diverse structure, with distinct sub-markets, comprising

young professionals, students, housing benefit claimants, slum

rentals, tied housing (a diminishing sub-sector, mostly of agricul-

tural workers), high-income renters (often in corporate lettings),

immigrants, asylum-seekers, temporary accommodation, and a

dwindling number of regulated tenancies (Rugg and Rhodes,

2008).

State intervention in land ownership

At present the land market (despite some limited exerciseof compulsory purchase) depends upon willing sellers. There

is widespread use of options pending planning permission for

new development, while social objectives are partly met through

Section 106 agreements and similar measures such as the new

CommunityInfrastructure Levy.Development landshortages affect

housing but also hinder more unpopular developments (e.g.,

energy generation, renewable or otherwise, waste disposal sites,

transport infrastructure). Such shortages may focus attention back

to the unequal distribution of land ownership. With land owners

unwilling to release a parcel of land at a particular time, public

sectoragencies mayresort to compulsory purchase to achieve ade-

quate land supply. The costs can be reduced by alternative models

for land assembly, such as land readjustment on continental Euro-

pean models (Home, 2007; LREW, 2003).

Conclusions

There is littlepolitical pressure to change land ownershipstruc-

tures at present, but this may not continue. Powerful forces are

shrinking available development land, including the presence of

large private owners, the need to protect countryside and habitats,

and the management of flood risk. Conflicts over land use alloca-

tion are increasing, and the planning system struggles to mediate

in these disputes. Future population pressure and the accelerat-

ing impact of climate change may force drastic measures, such

as increased state intervention to control and manage that scarce

and dwindling basic resourceland. Such intervention may be a

prerequisite for the successful management and security of other


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basicsocial needs:housing, food, energy, water, waste, ecosystems,

transport and utilities.

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12 land ownership in the united kingdom - trends preferences and future

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