The Land Question in the British Isles in 21st Century

The Land Question in the British Isles seems to be getting some long overdue attention.

Nickglais has been investigating Welsh Land Ownership and and Andy Wightman Scottish Land Ownership.

When the New History of Land is written in these Islands what we call a ground up history of the English, Welsh and Scottish People can be written for the first time - real historical materialism  which will blow away much of the elite/one per cent history that has been written top down until this day.

Like Louis Althusser says History is still a continent waiting to be discovered.



* The UK has 60 million acres of land in total

* 70% of the land is owned by 1% of the population.

* Just 6,000 or so landowners - mostly aristocrats, but also large institutions and the Crown - own about 40 million acres, two thirds of the UK.

* Britain's top 20 landowning families have bought or inherited an area big enough to swallow up the entire counties of Kent, Essex and Bedfordshire, with more to spare.

* Big landowners measure their holdings by the square mile; the average Briton living in a privately owned property has to exist on 340 square yards.

* Each home pays £550/ann. on average in council tax while each landowning home receives £12,169/ann. in subsidies. The poor subsidising the super rich. In Ireland where land redistribution occurred, there is no council tax.

* A building plot, the land, now constitutes between half to two- thirds of the cost of a new house.

* 60 million people live in 24 million "dwellings".

* These 24 million dwellings sit on approx 4.4 million acres (7.7% of the land).

* Of the 24 million dwellings, 11% owned by private landlords and 65% privately owned.

* 19 million privately owned homes, inc gardens, sit on 5.8% of the land.

* Average dwelling has 2.4 people in it.

* 77% of the population of 60 million (projected to be more in new census) live on only 5.8% of the land, about 3.5 million acres (total 60 million).

* Agriculture only accounts for 3% of the economy.

* Average density of people on one residential acre is 12 to 13.

* 10.9 million homes carries a mortgage of some kind.

* Average value of an acre of development land is £404,000. High in south east of £704,154, low in north east of £226,624. London is in a category of its own.

* Of the world’s 15 most expensive prime commercial property locations, five are in England.

* London West End occupation costs of £98 per square foot are the most expensive in the world. They are around 40 per cent more than any other city in the world, and double that of Paris, the next most expensive European city.

* Prime site occupation costs in Manchester and Leeds are around 40 percent more than mid-town Manhattan.

* Reservations of land have been placed by builders to a value of 37 billion to build the 3-4 million homes required. The land reserved is almost wholly owned by aristocrats; with none of it on the land registry. This land is coming out of subsidised rural estates, land held by off-shore trusts and companies and effectively untaxed. 

* Tony Blair ejected from the House of Lords 66 hereditary peers, who between them owned the equivalent of 4.5 average sized English counties.