South West London-based property company Capital & Counties Plc will invest ?20,000 in a pilot on-line database system, the next stage of the year old Domesday 2000 project, which by the end of the century aims to integrate existing databases on land ownership, value, and usage. But the scheme, which could be very profitable for whoever runs it, is arousing controversy because of questions of privacy law; pricing; degree of access to Government information; commercial sensitivity to confidential information and software management; and the potential roles of the public and private sector running such a system.
Conveyancing
These, rather than technical issues, will preoccupy researchers from the University of East London and Ordnance Survey who hope to combine samples of rural and urban information in their demonstration system, to be operational by mid-1993. The ultimate aim – a National Land Information System, which would be accessible to companies and the public via terminals in offices, libraries, banks and post offices would have a variety of uses. For instance, it would enable potential investors to identify sites or buildings in particular areas and investigate rates, land title restrictions, local land charges, planning consents, existing use, transport and local unemployment. Conveyancing would also be easier and quicker for house-buyers. However, if the experiences of other countries is anything to go by – similar systems exist in Europe, North America and Australia – the majority of enquiries would come from marketing companies. Over 60% of the 10m enquiries handled by the Swedish system one year for example, were weighted towards providing marketing information that had no direct connection with land transfer. The calls, charged at 10 pence a minute created a turnover of ?1m. This begs important questions about control and privacy. The proposed system would likely draw on data from private sources as well as that from HM Land Registry, the Inland Revenue, local government registers – including schools, land use and council tax lists – and the Ordnance Survey. At present, such information is publicly available – but on an individual rather than wholesale basis, making it much harder to cross-reference and to build comprehensive data profiles. By Lynn Stratton
The bringing together of information from different sources would bring about a broad and general concern for privacy a spokesman for the government’s Data Protection office told Computergram. In recognition of this, project researchers have recommended that an extension to individual rights would be necessary if the full system were to be implemented. Nevertheless, Domesday 2000 has support in government and private circles – including the initially suspicious property sector, which felt threatened by the notion of greater public access to its information. A survey by Wolfson College, Cambridge indicated that 80% of 105 potential users among property agents, developers, landowners, retailers, local authorities and lawyers surveyed supported the introduction of the system. The findings beg the question Well, they would wouldn’t they? given that 65% of them already spend over ?10,000 per year accessing land data information; 30% spend over ?100,000. Still, improving the quantity, reliability and accessibility of current information would not help to avoid disasters such as a recent case where a local authority had to pay out ?9m for mistakenly approving the sale of an unsuitable plot of land to a developer. It would also help reduce the research costs of public bodies and environmental groups. There seems to be a sense of inevitability about the whole thing. The Conservative election manifesto promised to explore the idea of a computerised property data-bank bringing together information held by the Land Registry and other bodies and several potential components for the system are already being put in place. Her Majesty’s Land Registry for England and Wales expects that information covering 90% of the country will be publicly accessible by 1988; t
he Inland Revenue Valuation Office now has a database providing access to rating information on commercial properties; and the Local Government Management Board is developing a land and property gazetteer.
Digitised mapping
Integrating such textual information with graphical input – such like the Ordnance Survey’s digitised mapping system; building in algorithms that could search for particular characteristics; and front-ending it all with an easy-to-use interface is the technical challenge posed by the project. There are no firm decisions yet as to who might co-ordinate the system. It seems that a joint private and public arrangement, likely to include Ordnance Survey, is the most probable. Additional work on pricing strategy and an awareness programme for potential users is also needed.
