Saturday 24 September 2011

Crash course in Land Law

By Woman on a Raft in the comments at Orphans.

The author of the actual post, exaggerating wildly, said: "the popular view is that although the landowner has paid for the land, it’s not really theirs and everyone should have access to it whenever they feel like it without having to ask anyone for permission."

WoaR responded with this:

It’s English property law. They don’t own it. Only the Queen does, and she has sold a number of rights over it to them. She (that is, the Crown) defines what right(s) it wants to sell and in this case it was a parcel of land in the green belt which can be cultivated or not, but what it can’t be is turned in to a housing estate without permission.

There is no double-think if the conditions exist at purchase. So, the legislation which imposed a right-to-roam on people who had not bought land with that condition is something one can meaningfully argue about.

If, however, you buy something with a national monument, protected tree or various wayleaves, covenants or restrictions or listed buildings on it, then that is part of the deal. For instance, up until the mid-90s if you bought a house in a mining area there was a provision that reserved mineral rights to the National Coal Board, so you couldn’t go sinking a mine in your back garden.

There’s not double-think here – only a mistake as to what ownership over land legally means. It isn’t the same as ownership of other items, which is why there is a separate branch called Land Law.

So:

Do you own the land you’ve paid for or not?
No. The Crown owns it.

If you don’t own it, what have you paid for?
You have paid for a number of rights over it which may or may not be honoured in perpetutity, depending on what it said on the deal and how long the Crown lasts for. The main right is usually the right to exclude others, but as we’ve seen, that can be modified.

As regards Dale Farm, the crucial part is that the disputed parcel of land is defined as green belt, meaning the land was bought at the price of agricultural land, not land with outline planning permission for 50 dwelling plots on it. The green belt status was known about and there was no question of them getting further planning permission following DF1.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes, but who owns the green belt land ?, if it is the crown, then it must be the peoples land, we own it

SumoKing said...

very gradually it appears people may be coming round to the idea of LVT

for example this discussion at lawyer dsicussion forum and tabloid gossip sheet rollonfriday, there is hope yet I suppose

http://www.rollonfriday.com/Discussion/MainDiscussion/tabid/79/Id/8698899/currentPage/0/Default.aspx

Mark Wadsworth said...

Anon, farmers own "freeholds" of it which gives them the right to farm it, exclude others from it and collect ag subsidies.

SK, good diatribe at the end there by you! But we can't let these people get away with calling LVT a "wealth tax" it's not, it's a sophisticated kind of Poll Tax (only how much you pay is decided where you want to live). Just about every other tax is a wealth tax, e.g. income tax, NIC, corporation tax, VAT, inheritance tax or capital gains tax.

Gypsy Boy said...

So why do councils build & allow development of housing estates prisons etc if you cant do that on green belt if the law as you say does not allow ?

Mark Wadsworth said...

GB, there's land law and there is planning law. Land law says you can do anything which planning law allows, but planning law is made up on the hoof to keep certain special interest groups happy.

Neither of this is in anyway natural law, which is why laws relating to land or planning are wildly different in different countries (or diferent in different parts of the same country, or different in the same country but different centuries), as opposed to 'natural' laws saying 'Thou shalt not steal or kill' which are more or less the same wherever or whenever you go.