Look Who Owns Britain….
A third of Britain’s land is still in the hands of a tiny group of aristocrats, according to the most extensive ownership survey in nearly 140 years.
In a shock to those who believed the landed gentry were a dying breed, blue-blooded owners still control vast swathes of the country within their inherited estates. The Duke of Westminster has a property portfolio totalling around £6billion
A group of 36,000 individuals – only 0.6 per cent of the population – own 50 per cent of rural land.
Their assets account for 20million out of Britain’s 60million acres of land, and the researchers estimate that the vast majority is actually owned by a wealthy core of just 1,200 aristocrats and their relatives.
The top ten individual biggest owners control a staggering total of more than a million acres between them.
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The top private landowner, not just in Britain but Europe, is the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensbury, whose four sumptuous estates cover 240,000 acres in England and Scotland.
But while his land is the most vast, it is not the most valuable, as the net worth depends on how much is farmland, as well as the value of the property and sporting and heritage activities on it.
The most valuable land belongs to Number 4 on the list, the Duke of Westminster, whose Grosvenor Estate, worth a whopping £6billion, takes in the wealthiest areas of London, including Belgravia and Mayfair.
Second on the list of the most land owned is Scottish magnate the Duke of Atholl.
His 145,700 acres have pushed Prince Charles, who as Duke of Cornwall has 133,000 acres, into third place on the list of individual owners.
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The report’s author, Kevin Cahill, who has been researching land ownership for ten years, told the Daily Mail: ‘A small minority still own a huge amount of Britain’s land and what surprises many people is that over the last 100 years, not a lot has changed.
‘For the rich the pursuit of land is as important as it’s ever been. They receive subsidies and most of their assets are held in trust, avoiding inheritance tax.