[P2P-F] Fwd: Myth about British Land Scarcity - landowners paid to keep property off the market

Thu Dec 8 19:53:25 CET 2011

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante.monson at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 2:42 AM
Subject: Myth about British Land Scarcity - landowners paid to keep
property off the market
To: econowmix at googlegroups.com

http://www.newstatesman.com/life-and-society/2011/03/million-acres-land-ownership

"The myth spun about Britain is that land is scarce. It is not – landowners
are paid to keep it off the market. As a result, we have the smallest, most
expensive houses in Europe"

large excerpt :

 The partly understood change is the urbanisation of society to the point
where 90 per cent of us in the United Kingdom live in urban areas. Hidden
inside that transformation is the shift from a society in which, less than
a century and a half ago, all land was owned by 4.5 per cent of the
population and the rest owned nothing at all. Now, 70 per cent of the
population has a stake in land, and collectively owns most of the 5 per
cent of the UK that is urban. But this is a mere three million out of 60
million acres.

Through this transformation, the heirs to the disenfranchised of the
Victorian era have inverted the relationship between the landed and the
landless. This has happened even while huge changes have occurred in the 42
million acres of rural countryside. These account for 70 per cent of the
home islands and are the agricultural plot. From being virtually the sole
payers of such tax as was levied in 1873 (at fourpence in the 240p pound),
the owners of Britain's agricultural plot are now the beneficiaries of an
annual subsidy that may run as high as £23,000 each, totalling between
£3.5bn and £5bn a year. Urban dwellers, on the other hand, pay about £35bn
in land-related taxes. Rural landowners receive a handout of roughly £83
per acre, while urban dwellers pay about £18,000 for each acre they hold,
an average of £1,800 per dwelling, the average dwelling standing on
one-tenth of an acre.

Britain urgently needs land reform, but there is a problem. The "tenants"
of between 30 and 50 per cent of the Home Island land mass are unknown.

...

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