Dr James Vitali gives evidence to the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Public Bill Committee

Policy Exchange’s Head of Political Economy, Dr James Vitali, gave evidence to the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Public Bill Committee on Thursday.
As part of the session, James discussed his recent report The Property Owning Democracy, which won widespread support from across Westminster. He argued for some technical improvements to the bill to enable more flat leaseholders to gain a share in the freehold of their building, and in so doing to secure a more meaningful ownership stake in the economy.
Policy Exchange’s The Property Owning Democracy was published at the end of 2023, and is available here:
policyexchange.org.uk/publica...

[@geofftoase3855]

Most of the world's land is owned by very few. Land reform is needed to change that - to accomplish that would require a paradigm shift in landholding. Taking the UK as an example the legal notion that the area constituting the UK is ultimately allodially owned, as an incorporeal hereditament, by the monarch as feudal overlord would be replaced by the legal notion that all the UK area is the allodial corporeal hereditament of the nation. The UK would become a Nation-State. There would be no need for anyone to move, areas can be life-time leased from the nation [through the land registry or private business arrangement of which the land registry is informed]. The monarch’s technical ownership of the UK would be extinguished (the position of the monarch as a Head of State need not be affected) by an Act based on human rights legislation; as successfully employed against the Duke of Westminster in 1985. Incumbents, individual or corporate, would become life-time leaseholders (instead of a freeholder or leaseholder who holds tenure of land of the crown) of the areas they presently control. Freehold would be replaced by an alienable life-time lease - the lease-holder would be free to dispose of the lease through sale, gift or will, and to rent or sub-let.
In order to pay ground rent of £10 p.a. to every UK national, as recognition of the nation’s superior ownership,. a charge of about £8/acre on landholders present holdings would be necessary. The Duke of Buccleugh would pay at least £2.28mn p.a., Duke of Athol £1.18mn p.a., Duchy of Cornwall £1.09mn p.a. and the Duchy of Lancaster about £0.38mn p.a. (if they retained exclusive use over all the land they presently lease or hold freehold title to). The average detached house would pay about £3 p.a., the average terraced house £1.5 p.a. Farm holdings in the UK range between 50 acres (£400p.a.) and over 250acres (£2000 p.a. or over). Owners of flats in multi-occupancy buildings would pay their (much reduced) proportion of ground rent on the land occupied by the building and hard standing (£80/acre) and any open ground (£8/acre) surrounding it, if the public were excluded - all holders contribution being determined by the area held, not its value. [considered critique welcomed]