The information about who owns what property in England and Wales is, in theory, generally in the public domain, at least for those properties that are registered with the Land Registry. Some properties that have not changed hands for several decades may still be unregistered and details of the ownership is not publicly available. Even for those properties on the Land Registry, ownership may not be entirely clear where title is registered to a company or trust and who benefits from these arrangements is obscure. This is particularly the case where the company registered as the owner of the title is a foreign company, maybe based in a tax haven.
From the start of 2023, any foreign entity that owns property in England or Wales has to notify Companies House and should be included on the register of overseas entities. Included on that register has to be details of who the beneficial owner(s) of the entity are. Note that properties that are owned by individual foreign persons, e.g. a French resident who owns a holiday home in Cornwall, are not included in this system; it only applies to companies, partnerships, trusts etc.
There is an excellent website run by Dan Neidle of Tax Policy Associates that has recently published an interactive map for the whole of England and Wales that shows where all these properties are. I recommend reading the information on that website that explains in more detail the issues around ownership of properties by foreign entities.
Through a piece of coding wizardry performed by the developer of the map, it is possible for anyone to click on any of the locations shown to bring up details of the address of the property on the Land Registry and other information such as the name of overseas entity that owns the title and a link to its entry on the Companies House website.
From that map of the whole of England and Wales, I have extracted the information related to Cornwall properties only and put them into a spreadsheet. There are just under 400 properties in Cornwall where an overseas entity has a registerable title. Anyone is free to view the information in this spreadsheet and to use it as they see fit. The spreadsheet is read-only. There are hyperlinks in the document - you may need to download the document to your computer and open it there for the hyperlinks to work.
The fact that a foreign entity owns a particular property does not automatically mean that anything unlawful is going on. However, there are some foreign entities listed on the spreadsheet that do not seem to have registered with Companies House as being owners of a property within England or Wales and it is an offence not to have registered.
Some points of interest include:
• There are 176 different overseas entities based in 23 different jurisdictions, e.g. Jersey, Guernsey, Isle of Man, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands etc.
• Of those overseas entities, 21 do not appear on the Companies House register of overseas entities.
• Properties owned by an overseas entity include individual residential properties, clusters of properties on the same development, e.g. 7 properties at Brunel Quays, Lostwithiel; individual rooms at a surf lodge in Newquay; individual apartments in a care home in St Austell; Chacewater Health Centre owned by a Jersey registered company.
• Two overseas entities, Ayot Limited (Jersey) and Solarfair Investments Limited (Jersey), have entered into leases for “airspace” above residential properties in order to fit solar panels on them.
• The beneficial owners of overseas entities vary - British citizens, non British citizens, other foreign owned companies, trusts etc.
If anyone wishes to manipulate the information in the spreadsheet in order to perform further analysis, please email me explaining what you intend to do and I can send you the password that will enable you to edit the file.