If carried through this would have made information even more difficult to access. In 2016, the Tories attempted to privatise the Land Registry, the public body responsible for keeping a database of land and property in England and Wales.

No doubt for similar reasons, public bodies have been very poor at recording what land they have disposed of. Meanwhile, “a few thousand dukes, baronets and country squires own far more land than all of middle England put together”. Shrubsole says that most people have little idea how unequal land ownership is, but just 5% of England’s land is owned by ordinary householders. It is amazingly difficult to identify landowners in England and, he writes, “there’s a reason for that: concealing wealth is part and parcel of preserving it”. In another new book, Who Owns England?, Guy Shrubsole investigates what he describes as England’s darkest secret, using computer mapping, dogged investigation and the occasional helpful leak. Some health trusts have to buy back land on the open market in order to build new hospitals. The NHS ‘estate’, estimated at around 50,000 hectares in 1982, has shrunk by over 70% to 6,500 hectares today. NHS land, for example, was a particular target under New Labour as a result of the pressure of the ‘internal market’ on health trusts. While disposals have generally been more rapid under Tory and Tory-led administrations, they are not the only ones at it. The sale of land continues and, Christophers suggests, may be speeding up.Īll types of public land have been targeted, including that held by local and central government. That dwarfs the other big privatisations, such as housing, railways or utilities, and represents more than twelve times the value of the Royal Bank of Scotland. In his book, The New Enclosure, Brett Christophers estimates conservatively that this amounts to a £400 billion privatisation. Over the last 40 years a startling 10% of Britain’s land mass has been sold off by the state. The New Enclosure: the appropriation of public land in neoliberal Britainīy Brett Christophers, Published by Verso, 2018, £20 Who Owns England? How we lost our green & pleasant land & how to take it backīy Guy Shrubsole, Published by William Collins, 2019, £20 Now two new books, reviewed here by PAUL KERSHAW, and recent Labour Party statements are helping to put these important issues on the agenda. Also shrouded in secrecy is who actually owns a lot of it. Land privatisation, the largest neoliberal grab in Britain since Margaret Thatcher came to office in 1979, has scarcely been debated. Who Owns England? How we lost our green & pleasant land & how to take it back By Guy Shrubsole, Published by William Collins, 2019, £20 The New Enclosure: the appropriation of public land in neoliberal Britain By Brett Christophers, Published by Verso, 2018, £20 Issue 230 July-August 2019 The landowning establishment

Who owns england by guy shrubsole