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Technical specification

UK companies that own property in England and Wales

Overview

HM Land Registry published this version of the dataset from March 2014 to September 2017. It was published quarterly and shows freehold or leasehold registered titles that were legally owned by a company.

Specification scope

Inclusions and exclusions

The data may contain registrations by the following owner types:

  • corporations aggregate (a separate legal entity formed by more than one individual person. The corporate aggregate has an existence which is separate from the persons comprising it. The term is used to distinguish them from corporations sole which are legal entities consisting of a single person at any one time)
  • county councils
  • other local authorities
  • housing associations
  • industrial and provident societies
  • registered societies
  • limited companies
  • public limited companies
  • unlimited companies
  • limited liability partnerships
  • community interest companies
  • Societas Europaea (where registered at Companies House)
  • UK Companies with an overseas correspondence address

The data excludes titles where the registered owners are:

  • private individuals
  • overseas companies
  • charities including Charitable Incorporated Organisations (CIO)

If an excluded owner type is the sole owner, all details will be removed from the dataset.

If a registered title is owned by both included and excluded owner types, the excluded owner details will be removed from the name, proprietorship and correspondence address columns. An indicator will be displayed to highlight there are other proprietors.

Email addresses and British Forces Post Office addresses have been removed from the correspondence address records. These are considered private and personal.

Relationship to other HM Land Registry data products

The dataset is aligned with the Overseas companies that own property in England and Wales. It contains approximately 100,000 records, which describes titles registered to an overseas company or corporate body.

The title number allows relational links to be made with other HM Land Registry datasets that also contain the title number.

Data content and structure

Table 1 – UK companies that own property in England and Wales (March 2014 – September 2017): class diagram

Class diagram of the dataset which describes the content and structure
UK companies that own property in England and Wales
PAON
SAON
Leading info
Sub building description
Sub building number
House description
House number
House alpha
Second house number
Second house alpha
Trail info
Street name
Street name 2
Local name
Local name 2
Town name
District name
County name
Region
Postcode
Postcode area
Postcode district
Postcode sector
Property address
Non private individual name
Company Registration number
Proprietorship
Correspondence address
Tenure
Title number
Date proprietor added
Change indicator
Change date

Table 2 - UK companies that own property in England and Wales: table structure

Description of the data fields in the dataset
Field name Data type Mandatory Description
PAON String No Primary Addressable Object Name. Number or description used to identify the property. This will often be a house number or name.
SAON String No Secondary Addressable Object Name. Number or description used to identify property. This will often be a floor or flat within a building.
LEAD_INFO String No Leading information. Text which is undefinable information which commences a property description. For example, ‘land on the south side of’.
SUB_
BUILDING_DESC		 String No Sub building description. Name of a subdivision for example, the ground floor flat of a house or a purpose-built block of flats.
SUB_
BUILDING_NO		 String No Sub building number. Number which uniquely identifies a subdivision of a house or a purpose-built block of flats.
HOUSE_DESC String No House description. Name of a property that is unique within a street or locality.
HOUSE_NO Numeric No House number. Number which uniquely identifies a property within a street.
HOUSE_ALPHA String No Name which, when used with house number, uniquely identifies a property within a street.
SECOND_
HOUSE_NO		 String No Second house number. Number associated with a particular property to show the upper limit of a house number range. For example, 16 – 18.
SECOND_
HOUSE_ALPHA		 String No Letter that follows the second number in an address. For example, 16 - 18B.
TRAIL_INFO String No Trailing information text Undefinable information which ends a property description, e.g. ‘and parking spaces’
STREET_NAME String No Name of any thoroughfare in England and Wales which is the first or only street name in an address.
STREET_NAME_2 String No Name of any thoroughfare in England and Wales which is either the second street name in an address or an alternative street name to that held in the street_name column.
LOCAL_NAME String No First or only name of a place which is either a hamlet or village in a rural area or a subdivision of a town or city in an urban area.
LOCAL_NAME_2 String No Name which is either the second local place name in an address or an alternative local name.
TOWN_NAME String No Name of an urban area within England and Wales. town_name will be restricted to the post office’s concept of post town.
DISTRICT_NAME String No Name of a district created since local reorganisation in 1974. Administrative district also covers the London boroughs, unitary authorities and Isles of Scilly Parishes.
COUNTY_NAME String No Name of current county in England and Wales.
REGION String No Name of a geographic region which comprises one or more current counties, former counties or unitary authorities or any combination of these. The names and extents of the regions are the economic planning regions used by various bodies. Region names allocated by the Office for National Statistics differ in some instances from names in this field.
POSTCODE String No A combination of up to 7 letters and numbers (plus one embedded blank), which defines geographic units. It is part of a coding system created and used by the post office across the UK. For example, SW1A 2AA.
POSTCODE_
AREA		 String No Part of the postcode that identifies the area. It consists of the first letters and one number for example, SW1A 2AA.
POSTCODE_
DISTRICT		 String No Part of the postcode that identifies the district. It consists of one or two letters followed by one or two numbers or one number and one letter. For example, SW1A 2AA.
POSTCODE_
SECTOR		 String No Part of the postcode that identifies the sector. It consists of the first part of the postcode before the blank space and the first number of the second part of the postcode. For example, SW1A 2AA.
PTY_ADDR String No Property address. Text which is the property description as it appears on the register.
NON_PI_NAME String No Non - Private Individual Name. Name of a company, corporate body, local authority or other organisation or establishment.
CO_REG_NO String No Company Registration Number. A unique identifier assigned to a company when it is registered at Companies' House. Although the name of the company may change, the Company Registration Number will stay the same.
PROPRIETORSHIP String No Text which describes the category in which a name falls.
CORRESPONDENCE_
ADDRESS		 String No Register address string. The address and postcode of either the property or the registered proprietor. It is in the same format as it appears in the register. The text will include any commas but exclude any final punctuation marks and any internal delimiters.
TENURE String No Freehold or leasehold.
TITLE_NO String Yes Unique number which identifies a registered title to land or a caution against first registration.
DATE_PROPRIETOR_
ADDED		 Date No The date that the proprietor was added to the register.
CHANGE_IND String No Change indicator. On a full data file ‘A’ means ‘Added’. In a COU file where data has been updated there will be 2 rows shown, a row with a ‘D’ to delete the old row and a row with ‘A’ for the added or changed data.
CHANGE_DATE Date No The date of the extract.

Data quality

During more than 150 years of land registration, improvements to working practice may have caused some inconsistencies in the data.

  • Only completed register entries are included. No pending applications or historic owners are included.
  • The information about owners may not always reflect the position on the Register, as we do not include information about private individuals, overseas companies and charities.
  • The source data is from information supplied by citizens, corporate bodies and conveyancers on registration deeds and documents. There is often inconsistency in the way in which addresses and names are supplied to Land Registry.
  • There may be spelling errors in the ownership names. This could be due to input error or the way in which they were presented.
  • Detailed address information is provided wherever possible.
  • The postcode is taken from the registered property description. If one hasn’t been registered then the postcode will be blank.
  • The Date Proprietor Added is the date the proprietor was registered. When HM Land Registry registers a proprietor, the date of registration is usually entered in the register. This date is automatically entered but may be overwritten and left blank, for example, where two individual titles are amalgamated. Approx. 2% of titles in this dataset have a blank field. Where a date is shown this might not be the date that the proprietor was first registered. For example, it might be the date of the last registered property transfer where one owner remains the same.
  • There are typographic errors in Company Registration Numbers.
  • It is possible for a Company Registration Number to legitimately be associated with more than one company. For example, if a company changed its name and did not update the property record. Clerical or format errors may show a mismatch between company name and registration number. There was no obligation to record a Company Registration Number before 1 January 1997. However, approx. 2% of LTD or PLC titles registered after this date have no Company Registration Number due to errors made.
  • There are some errors where an incorrect proprietorship has been selected during registration.
  • If we find any overseas Companies, charities or private individuals have been included in this dataset, we’ll remove them.

Data capture information

The data is collected when property is transferred or leased to a non-private individual. During the application process the Company Registration Number is recorded. This has been the case since 1997.

HM Land Registry does not validate Company Registration Numbers. Other types of corporations may be allocated a number by their registration authority.

We take customer addresses at registration and check them against Ordnance Survey AddressBase data if possible. We’ll create a new address in our register if there’s no match.

Data maintenance

This is historical data and no changes will be made to the files.

Data product delivery

Access to the dataset

There is one file for each quarter from March 2014 to September 2017. There will be no updates to these files. There is no data available for the quarter ending March 2017.

Granting access

You will need to create an account on the Use land and property data service and sign in to access the data.

File structure

The dataset is provided as a CSV file. The data in each file will:

  • use a comma to separate each field: ‘,’ (ASCII 44)
  • enclose all fields within double quotes “ “ (ASCII 34)
  • send blank fields without a character between double quotes: ”“
  • have a date format of DD-MM-YYYY. For example, 14 December 2013 will be shown as 14-12-2013
  • use UTF-8 encoding (the way characters are coded for websites)
  • have line separation removed
  • have the column heading as the first row

File name

The file names will be structured as follows:

CCOD_FULL_<1><2><3>.csv
<1>Year of file creation (format YYYY)
<2>Month of file creation (format MM)
<3>File part (format N)

Example file name structure for March 2016:
CCOD_FULL_2016_03_1.csv

Contact information

If you have any feedback or questions about this data, contact us:

Telephone

  • Telephone: 0300 006 0478
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