The Times 12th January 2002
In this brave work, Cahill makes a plea for the last great social reform,land reform
The Independent 11th January 2002
This lengthy book is packed with the facts and figures of landownership in Britain, county by county, title by title and family by family
The Irish Times 26th January 2002
A book of prime-even sublime- importance
The Sunday Times 25th November 2001
According to Cahill the failure to redistribute land in Britain is driving up prices for everyone
The Scotsman 8th December 2001
An exceptional piece of information gathering, prefaced with an impssioned essay on the issue of landownership in the UK today
Product Description
This is a critique of both the landowning artistocracy and the Land Registry. Cahill argues that our present system of landownership is of material detriment to the vast majority of homeowners in the UK, while many of the wealthiest landowners in the country pay no rates and actually receive money in the form of grants and subsidies.
From the Publisher
The book has received a total of over 80 reviews or significant mentions to date. It has featured in a series of BBC programmes and has attracted widespread interest, in Parliament, in Government and around the world
From the Author
Following the publication of Who Owns Britain in September 2001, Adrian Sanders MP read key parts of the book into the Parliamentary record (Hansard) in debates about the Land registry. Startled by the MP's revelations, most of which were new to him, the Lord Chancellor's minister in the Commons, Michael Wills MP, who was in charge of the Land registry, asked that institution to tell him about itself. The Land registry told the minister that;
It does not possess information about the acreage of England and Wales
That titles were recorded without recording the acreage of each title. The Land registry also informed the minister that it estimated that about 65% of England and wales was the subject of a register of title (and 35%) was not. But this was only an estimate. The Lord Chancellor also revealed in the preamble to the LanD registration act that freeholds in England & Wales were not freeholds. "The Crown" the Lord Chacellor said "is the only absolute owner of land in England & Wales; all others hold an estate in land. Estates, which derive from feudal terms of tenure, originally took many forms but were reduced by The Law of Property Act 1925 to two, an estate in fee simple, absolute in possession, generally known as freehold and an estate for a term of years absolute generally known as lease hold'.
The Government is committed to reforming both the nature of landownership in law, and to completing the Land Registry
About the Author
Kevin Cahill is a former army officer who has worked at the House of Commons, the House of Lords and the European Parliament as an advisor and researcher. He is the author of books on business, trade and politics, and researched the original Sunday Times Rich List.
