A new registration regime is coming to the real estate sector in England and Wales. Developers, promoters and other beneficiaries of “contractual control” arrangements will soon be required to disclose key details to HM Land Registry for listing on a public database. The policy aim is to bring transparency to who controls land, and for how long, even where ownership has not changed. 

Whether this increased visibility enhances market confidence and efficiency – or simply introduces new layers of administration and delay – will depend on how clearly the regime’s boundaries are defined, how practical the submission process proves to be, and how proportionately the data requirements operate in transactions. 

Strategic land has long been assembled through private contracts that operate behind the title register: options, conditional contracts, pre-emption rights, and certain promotion rights that shape how, when and to whom land can be sold or leased. These structures are entirely mainstream, but they have also been largely opaque to third parties, including local authorities, potential competitors and neighbouring landowners. The new regulations aim to shine a light on these arrangements by requiring prescribed information to be provided to HM Land Registry and then published in a searchable format. 

That is a departure from current practice, whereby protection of such arrangements is achieved by a notice or restriction on title (if at all), but the commercial characteristics of the control right are not readily discoverable or comparable across sites. The new database could therefore become market structural: it will make land control positions discoverable at scale and capable of being searched, compared and analysed. 

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