Hello!

Welcome to our November newsletter. This month there's one thing we'd really love you to do: help to open up the Land Registry.

👉 Have your say: make land ownership data free

The government has opened a consultation on making Land Registry ownership data free. It's the biggest step towards land transparency in 150 years.

Right now it costs £7 to find out who owns a single piece of land in England and Wales, and nearly £12 million to find out who owns most of the country. The core proposal is a free dataset of the owners of large land holdings, covering up to 95% of registered land, with a size threshold that would leave out almost all homes. It also proposes free access to title registers for company-owned land.

Large landowners and their lobbyists are likely to push back, so public responses really matter.

The deadline is 22 December.

❓Need help filling it out?

Join our free webinar: Open the Land Registry (Thursday 12 November, 10:00–11:30 GMT, online)

Alongside Guy Shrubsole, author of Who Owns England?, we'll explain what's proposed, why it matters, and walk through the questions that matter most, with talking points to help you respond. You don't need to be a land nerd or a policy expert to join and respond to the consultation.

⚠️ Book your place here ⚠️

💔 Can't make it? 

Guy has also written a very helpful question-by-question guide here.

• You can complete the consultation online here.

• Focus on questions 6-10, which cover the core proposal and the size threshold.

• Use Q7 to give your own examples of how you or your group would use the data. Real examples make responses most powerful.

Please forward this to anyone who cares about housing, land or nature. Let’s do this!

👉 Action needed: check your LandExplorer email before our next update

We’re updating LandExplorer soon to add email verification. When it goes live, everyone will be logged out of their account and asked to log back in to verify their email address.

Please check your account now. If you no longer have access to the email you signed up with, or you used a placeholder address, update it in your account settings before the change. Otherwise you may get locked out, because password resets can only be sent to the email on your account.

It only takes a minute: log into LandExplorer here and check the email address in your account.

👉 New on LandExplorer: the historical ownership layer

We're so excited to tell you that the historical ownership layer is now live in LandExplorer. It shows how a piece of land or property's ownership has changed over the past 10 years, so you can understand a landlord's history, not just a snapshot of who owns something today. This was one of the most requested features from our community, and we'd love to hear how you're using it!

Watch the video tutorial here.

👉 LandExplorer on stage at Land Talks

Our Co-Director Kate Swade recently spoke about LandExplorer at Land Talks #7, an evening of short talks on "Reimagining Land for a More Abundant Britain", hosted by Francis Irving and Henry Morris at The Sekforde in London.

Kate talked about how land and buildings should serve the communities around them, and about what becomes possible once ownership information is brought together in one free tool. That runs from finding out who's behind a housing association in your area to testing a hunch about who really owns a building. The slides are up on our blog if you'd like a look.

Browse the slides here.

👉 What our Crowdfunder showed about the commons

This summer, 125 of you raised £9,210 to fund LandExplorer, and over half gave without claiming a reward. Our team member Marcel has written about what that says about the commons: why shared resources don't have to end in "tragedy", and why who can see land data shapes who holds power.

Read Marcel’s blog What Our Successful Crowdfunder Showed about the Commons here. And if your organisation can, donate to our Solidarity Tier and help keep LandExplorer free for those who need it most.

That's all for this month. Thanks for reading, and see you next time.

In solidarity,
The DCC team