This is pretty interesting. I zoomed in to my parent's place and it turned out that while their street has a known owner, the next street doesn't. I know their street is leasehold, at a cost to them of £14 per year.
So the lack of tax on land value is interesting here, because I would assume the next street is also leasehold - perhaps some of the missing information could be crowdsourced here, by those paying the lease, although would that fall afoul of some other law?
It doesn't quite break down per street - my house is freehold, but a house we are buying across the street for my grandparents is leasehold. The land was sold by the Church in the 60s to developers - that is leasehold, part was retained by the council as public green spaces[1] and later sold - that is freehold.
[1] though it was already paved over with paving slabs, so a bit of a waste of time
A former owner of our terraced property kept the title and sold the house leasehold. We bought the freehold recently (c.5% of the sale value) having been owner-residents of the property for some years; in theory the leaseholder could have turfed us out eventually, which is crazy IMO. It seems the leasehold system is mostly a way to screw people out of money.
Sometimes it makes sense, for flats/apartments say, but rarely beyond that. It has been used recently by house builders to gather rent from people who thought they were owners, basically add in quite considerable hidden costs. Leases get sold on and the new owners add considerable "maintenance" fees, like hundreds of pounds per year (for which they literally do nothing, except administer the charges).
There is increasing abuse of leasehold properties in the UK developers are trying to sell new build leasehold - with spireling ground rents that increase massively.
Yeah, I spoke to my parents about this today. Apparently the street used to be part of a sports complex, and was sold to a developer in the 60s or 70s. They recall being given the option to buy the lease for £400 in the late 80s, the same option being given to all other residents. Some residents took up the offer, others didn't.
They think the next street is possibly owned by the council as it has a few council houses on it.
So the lack of tax on land value is interesting here, because I would assume the next street is also leasehold - perhaps some of the missing information could be crowdsourced here, by those paying the lease, although would that fall afoul of some other law?