All they wanted was the freedom to party. The State saw them as the enemy within.
A timely DIY indie film that follows the birth of the UK’s free party movement from the late 80s and early 90s and the social, political and cultural impact it’s had on our present times. Many Tories believed the movement’s DIY anti-consumerist lifestyles, prophetic environmental, radical, direct action anti-road protest and animal welfare ethos threatened the foundations of their neoliberal era State. The film explores the inception of the movement, a meeting between urban ravers and the new age travellers during Thatcher’s last days in power, and the explosive years that followed, leading to the infamous Castlemorton free festival in 1992 – the largest ever illegal rave, which provoked the drastic change of the laws of trespass with the notorious introduction of the Criminal Justice Act in 1994. Eschewing tired formulaic filmmaking styles and tokenistic big name DJ sound-bites, this exhilarating modern day folktale is told exclusively by those who were in the thick of it and features interviews with members of Spiral Tribe, DIY Sound system, Circus Warp, Bedlam and many others.
Colm Forde – DnR Creative Director
Dir Aaron Trinder| UK | 2023 | 107 mins
Screenings appear to be announced here on Facebook – please add a comment below if you find anywhere better to find them, thanks.
Yes, this is true. You can claim land for free in the UK through what is known as Adverse Possession. It takes a total of 12 years to get the land title in your name. But it takes only weeks to start using the land and making money from it.
But be in no doubt that you can become the owner of free land in the UK. It takes a matter of years to become the true owner of that free UK land. But this does not mean you have to wait to work that land.
I have now started uploading YouTube Videos @TheSmallFarmerLife Channel. I will discuss everything from what it is to look for land whether that’s claiming it for free which I will be making a Video about.
Videos will be on so many different subjects around starting and running a small farm…!
Now Let’s Discuss What You Need To Know On Claiming Land
How can you claim this land for free you may ask? Well, there are thousands and thousands of acres of land out there in the UK that are unregistered. Now, this does not mean that nobody owns the land. It could just mean that the land has never changed hands since 1990. This is when it became mandatory to register land or property after a sale.
Here is a quick overview of how the process works for Claiming Free Uk Land
More Detailed Explanation On How To Find land To Claim Below
As you can see in the image above there is still 20% of land and buildings not registered in the UK which is around 12 million acres. This is because the whole of the Uk is made up of 59.9 million acres in total.
If you don’t have the time to Adversely Possess Land and have a little money spare to invest in farmland. This is how I managed to get 2.6 acres for free in the space of 4 years. Go check out my post on “How To Find Land To Farm” and see how I did it.
There are so many other reasons that land has not been registered. All land is owned by someone, somewhere. This could even be the crown, but this does not mean that you can still not claim it.
Reasons, why land is vacant and could possibly be claimed, is for many reasons. The land could have belonged to a business that went bankrupt. That nobody knew the land belonged to the business and it was forgotten about.
The land could belong to a gas, electricity grid or railways that run through the country. There is plenty of free UK land out there that has belonged to people who have passed away. This land has just been forgotten about and is just sitting there.
The point being is that there is so much out there that people don’t have a clue who owns it. Meaning you could claim that land yourself for free, it is really quite amazing.
I was even told in the past by one of our council leaders & planning chairman to just go out and claim land free. This is one of the simplest and cheapest ways to get free land. Some councils have land they do not even know they own.
You Need To Be Looking For Land That Looks Like This. This land is just down the road from where I live. I have Seen It Just Get Worse Over Years. I Might Look Into This land.
Claiming Free Land Or Buildings
It is not as easy as walking up to a piece of land and saying “I Claim This Land In My Name”. There is a process that you need to go through to claim the land.
To claim the land in your name and have it registered in your name takes 12 years in total. 10 years to make the claim and 2 years for someone to object (The Rightful Owner). But you do not have to wait that long to use the land. It’s possible you are driving or walking past land, that you could claim and you’re passing it every day.
If you are looking to claim land for free and this can include buildings also. You need to be looking for unkept land, which could be overgrown with weeds and trees. The fencing could be rotting or no fence at all and can come in a small patch or acres.
I have extended people’s gardens through my business. Land that has been covered in nettles and thick brush, with an old shed much further back. I personally would have claimed it all, which was about a 3rd of an acre or more.
I have also claimed free land here in the UK for my customers. This was to extend their gardens and they still have it. They still have the free land attached to their gardens to this day with no problems.
How you should go about the first process. Let’s say you have seen a piece of land that is overgrown. It may have old fencing, that looks like it hasn’t been touched or repaired in years.
Firstly you would like to know if a local owns the land or if it has been registered. Now you can do this by knocking on local doors. You could also do a quick Land Registry Search for the registered keeper.
If no one knows who owns the land and you cannot find a registered keeper. This is a good start to staking your claim to that land.
Staking Your Claim To The Land
Staking your claim to the land for free is a little scary at first. But it is legal and you are not breaking the law. You will not be arrested and the police will not ever be called it is a civil matter.
That is unless you think you can just steal land in the UK. This is not what we are talking about, we are talking about claiming unused land.
Stealing Land: This is when you know that the land in question is in use by a current owner. They may or may not have registered it but they are using the land all the same. Do not do this there is plenty of land and buildings out there to claim without breaking the law.
Top Tip To Find Land To Claim
You should be looking for lots of potential land plots. Land that meets the criteria I mention in this article. This is the key to finding potentially a couple of pieces of free land.
You do not want to put all your eggs in one basket so to speak. But this does not also mean you have only one piece of land in mind or even a building. Then you should stay away just claim the one piece of land or building you have your eye on.
I am just saying if you make up several signs and stick those signs on land and buildings. If you think could be possible to claim then your chances will become higher. You might end up being able to claim none of them. Then again you could end up claiming them all.?
Make Sure You Have What You Need In Your Vehicle As You Travel Around, Such Things As Keep Out Signs..?
So you want to print out or get yourself some “Keep Out Signs”. Also, place your mobile number on and trespassers will be prosecuted. Then laminate them and get a cheap mobile phone and place the number on the sign also.
Quick tip purchase a cheap mobile phone with a number that you will only use for this purpose. Then nobody will get hold of your personal number and when it rings you will know what it’s about.
A4 paper will do fine to place your keep-out notices on and get them laminated to stop them from getting wet. Make sure you get at least 10 made for the different sites you have spotted as potential plots.
Now you have your little signs and place them on the entrance to the land. If nobody calls, to say hey what is your number and sign doing on my land, within a couple of weeks. This is a good sign for you that nobody in the area actually owns it. If they do call move on what have you lost a printed piece of paper?
After a month or two of your sign being on the entrance to the land and in full view. Then you need to go and start to clear the land and patch up the fences and do this on the cheap. You can stick a couple of goats in there if it is only long grass and nettles they will have it down in no time.
If it’s used as a tip it could take more time, or you could just put a gate up and stick a sign up and wait longer. But the sooner you start to sort the land out the better chance you have to get free land.
Use Free Or Reclaimed Timber And Materials
Use reclaimed timber to repair fencing and gates. All the while you are doing this take images and take notes also. Make sure the images have a date stamped on them. This is what most mobile phones do nowadays anyway and even the location also.
Using reclaimed materials or even free materials to fix the fencing and gates is a great way to save money. There are lots of places to find free materials. Including Facebook Market Place, FreeCycle, Gumtree, Preloved
Just Because it has A Gate Doesn’t Mean You Cannot Claim It,
Making Your Claim Stronger
Now you have started the process then you can rent the land out your free land for grazing.
People will pay for grazing horses or as allotments and you then collect rent. Keep all the receipts for the rent of the land. If you have been collecting rents for the land you are claiming and have been doing so for several years. You are really looking good to eventually register the land in your name.
If you really wanted to and felt that you would like to farm it. Then you could start to farming the land yourself, it is totally up to you.
But if you do all this work and then someone turns up a couple of years into the process. This is unlikely if you have already been renting it out for several years. Make sure you are keeping the records for proof, showing you have been caring for the land.
Temporary Title Claim To Land Or Building.
After 5 years you can put a temporary claim on the land. This is all explained on the Land Registry website. The Land Registry will also confirm that this is totally legal. This makes sure nobody comes along after you gave been there for several years and tries to stake a claim also.
At this time you might be saying this is too much time and energy. But just think about it what have you spent up to now? Nothing you have probably made money if you have rented the land out.
This is your money, nobody can take this money from you. Even if someone does turn up and say it belongs to them.
If this does happen, then the person who turns up and says it’s their land. They have to prove it is their land. So do not just take their word for it. If anyone else starts asking questions about you and the land. You do not have to tell them anything, do not lie to them, just do not say anything.
Unless they are just asking you how you grow your vegetables. I mean, be nice to locals, this will prove you have been using and caring for the land. Also making local friends will only benefit you in the long run.
If you tell them that you are claiming the land because it hasn’t been cared for. So you thought I’m having this, then who knows what or who will come out of the woodwork.
People are claiming land in this way every single day. There are even people selling information on how to claim free land. The only information you need I am telling you right here.
Also, it does not just have to be you that has been on the land for 12 years. If you got the land off a person who was on there for seven years. Then you only have to wait another five years to claim it. Make sure you get any evidence they have. Make sure that they have actually been there for along as they say they have.
Making Your Claim
Once you have been on the land for 10 years. You can then apply to have the land registered in your name. The law allows 2 years for any owner who has proof to come forward and challenge this application. Now as I have said earlier they have to prove it belongs to them.
Most times if you have occupied the land for ten years. Then you can be pretty sure, you are in with a good chance that it’s going to be yours. I have heard of people coming to claim the land. Then the person who is claiming the land won and got to keep the land over the challenger.
Even if the land goes back to the original owner and they can prove it belongs to them. You have had at least made some money from the land. How much depends on what you used it for or rented it out for.
You can also put in for planning permission for land. If it does not belong to you, so do not be scared of this. Yes, it’s a big chance if you are trying to get planning for a home. But if you are just looking to put up small barns, greenhouses, and sheds. Then you can easily take these structures down and move them.
The point is that there is a lot of land out there unregistered and registered. They could potentially be claimed totally free. Many places to look are the side of railways, electricity grid land, corners of farmland, old buildings left abandoned, old farmhouses in ruins, land that is just in a weird place and overgrown.
keep looking along the roadsides there is land. Some people may never have left in a will or had a family. Land left abandoned in mountains of paperwork by bankrupt banks & businesses. This will only eventually end up in the Crown’s hands if nobody claims it.
You can go and claim land and buildings today for free. So why not when driving around keep your eyes open? Make a few signs and put them anywhere you think the land is unregistered.
You also do not have to pay the £3 for the title deeds. Just move the cursor over the land you have found on the land registry website. If it has been registered it will say deeds available, if not then it will say none available.
Make sure when you do the Land Registry search for deeds. That you are in the middle of the piece of land. Not near the edge of the land. This way you will actually get to see if the deeds are for that piece of land. Not some other that is next to it.
Small pieces of land are hard to pinpoint for the deeds. The map has around a 20 – 30-meter radius. So it could pick up deeds from land next to it. So make sure you are getting the right title deeds.
If you also like to watch a video on this article click the link
The larger the piece of land the easier it is to make sure it’s not registered land.
Tips For Finding Land To Claim Free
Look for overgrown land. Check for uncared-for fencing. Look for weeds growing through the entrance drive if any. Even if there is a lock on an old metal gate, how old is the lock? Has it been opened lately, you can tell if it has.
How to claim land in 2020
You can get a feel for what to look for. When you really take notice of cared-for and uncared-for land. Look for land that’s scruffy and hilly that cannot be farmed etc. These are excellent targets to claim.
claiming uk land
If you go down this route I really hope you find a piece of land. I am almost certain there is some close to you and you don’t even realize it. Also, the advent of Google Earth is a great tool to look for potential land local to you.
You can look from the air and then go to street view. But remember these images can be a few years old. So once you have spotted your target piece, go out and take a look with your own eyes.
Please do not go and squat on land that obviously belongs to someone. This will do nothing to help you. You will only eventually be moved on and it is just wasted time and energy.
The right to wild camp on Dartmoor could be under threat again after the supreme court granted permission for a wealthy landowner to bring a case against it.
Last year, the Dartmoor National Park Authority won an appeal against a decision to ban wild camping on the moors.
Camping had been assumed to be allowed under the Dartmoor Commons Act since 1985, until a judge ruled otherwise last January. It was the only place in England that such an activity was allowed without requiring permission from a landowner.
The case hinged on whether wild camping counted as open-air recreation, leading to a long debate in the court of appeal. Lawyers acting for Alexander Darwall, the landowner, argued it was not, because when camping one was only sleeping rather than enjoying a particular activity.
After the court of appeal decision, lawyers acting for Darwall, a hedge funder and Dartmoor’s sixth-largest landowner, asked the supreme court to hear the case.
Darwall bought the 1,619-hectare (4,000-acre) Blachford estate on southern Dartmoor in 2013. He offers pheasant shoots, deerstalking and holiday rentals on his land.
His attempts to ban wild campers from using his estate without his permission sparked a large protest movement, with thousands going to Dartmoor to assert their right to camp. It awakened a land rights debate in the UK, with the Labour party weighing in. The party previously said it would legislate for a right to wild camp in all national parks. However, it since appears to have U-turned on its land rights policy.
Lewis Winks, from the Stars Are For Everyone campaign, said: “The loss of our cherished right to sleep under the stars on Dartmoor ignited a passionate and broad movement for greater land rights in England. This news is confirmation that reform is both needed and inevitable, and will act as a clarion call to all those who wish for generations to come to enjoy these fundamental freedoms.
“As ever, the right to wild camp is emblematic of the fragility of our wider rights in the English countryside, and Darwall’s latest egregious move illustrates the need for greater legal protections for access to nature.
“We hope that the court sees sense and returns a favourable verdict, enabling wild camping to continue on the commons of Dartmoor.”
Darwall’s legal team at Landmark Chambers said that the high court held that the words in the act “unambiguously excluded a right to camp on Dartmoor” and found in favour of the landowners. The court of appeal held that it “unambiguously included a right to camp” and allowed the Dartmoor National Park Authority’s appeal. “The appeal to the supreme court will determine once and for all this important issue, namely whether members of the public enjoy a right to camp on the Dartmoor commons,” it said.
“The supreme court will be asked to consider a number of principles applicable to statutory interpretation which will be of interest to practitioners. In particular, it will be invited to consider whether the court of appeal took sufficient account of admissible ‘background’ materials (i) in identifying the ‘mischief’ at which the legislation was aimed and (ii) in considering whether the statutory language was ambiguous.”
Locals’ uprising against the ‘Lord of the Manor’: Stately home Holkham Hall at centre of bitter row after Norfolk villagers claim its owner the Earl of Leicester ‘unfairly’ took over 3,000 acres of public land
Holkham Hall, which covers 25,000 acres, is owned by Thomas Coke, the Earl of Leicester
One of the most prestigious stately homes in the country is at the centre of a bitter legal row over the ownership of part of its vast 25,000 acre estate.
Holkham Hall, valued at more than £200 million, is on the north Norfolk coast and owned by the Earl of Leicester and the huge farming estate is run by Jake Fiennes.
But the picturesque marshes of Burnham Overy Staithe, near Brancaster, are at the centre of an extraordinarily fierce row in which villagers are challenging the power and influence of the local ‘Lord of the Manor’.
Locals claim that more than 3,000 acres of land is legally common land. They say the Earl of Leicester, of nearby Holkham Hall, has ‘unfairly’ claimed the part of the area as his own and that the land is being wrongly treated as private property.
Sailors and boat users are charged for moorings and launchings on the popular waterways and the fees are claimed by the Burnham Overy Harbour Trust which leases the land from the Holkham estate.
The eighth Earl of Leicester, Thomas Coke – an elected hereditary peer in the House of Lords, who was the Page of Honour to Queen Elizabeth II – insists the land is lawfully part of his estate.
In recent weeks, the dispute has been played out at Norwich Magistrates’ Court but the battle ended in defeat for the villagers, after a tribunal panel ruled against them. But they have vowed to continue their fight.
With average house prices of £1 million, the stretch of fashionable coast around Holkham has been dubbed Chelsea-on-Sea because of the growing number of Londoners buying up second homes or holiday lets.
The Scolt Head and District Common Rights Holders’ Association was set up forty years ago and has always argued that the land belongs to Burnham Overy Parish Council under historic Enclosure Acts that date back to the 18th century.
But the villagers say the Earl unlawfully registered the land to the Holkham estate in 2012 and has leased it to the Burnham Overy Harbour Trust which is wrongly charging people for moorings and license fees to launch boats.
Rod Cooke, secretary of the Scolt Head and District Common Rights Holders Association, accused the Holkham estate and Trust of ‘usurping from property that doesn’t belong to them’.
Common land has been taken from us and is being used as private property and there is not supposed to be any commercialisation of common land and they shouldn’t be profiting from it.
‘What they’ve done is unlawful and there’s no way common rights holders can get justice.
‘We’re perfectly happy to manage the common with everyone, but the Earl of Leicester, who calls himself the landowner, and the Trust won’t talk to us- they don’t believe we have any role in the management of the land we own.’
But Holkham estate says it successfully registered ownership of an island in Burnham Overy harbour, traditionally called the 77 Acres, with HM Land Registry between 2009 and 2015.
It denies any ownership of the Scolt Head Island nature reserve, which it says lies with the National Trust and with Natural England.
Peter Mitchell, managing director of the estate, said: ‘Ownership of the this land was challenged some four or five years after it was registered.
‘Holkham looked back into the estate records and agreed at the time the possibility that the ownership of the 77 Acres may not have been legitimately held by the previous owner, who sold a large block of land around the Burnhams to the Holkham estate in 1922.
‘If that counter argument were shown to be true, ownership would most likely have tracked from its status as unenclosed land into ownership by the parish council or the district council.’
The estate says that it has worked closely with the parish council over the last few years and that the authority came to the conclusion that they ‘neither needed to, nor wanted to, take on ownership’.
‘The Holkham estate therefore decided at that time that it should not transfer ownership to the parish council, but instead continue to take responsibility to manage this important area of natural habitat.’
The Scolt Head and District Common Rights Holders Association reported the Burnham Overy Harbour Trust to the Charity Commission thirty years ago but in 2019 the Commission said it was not going to take any action over the complaints. He said both had been ‘unlawfully contravened by the Commission and Trust’.
Mr Cooke submitted a Freedom of Information request to the Commission asking for correspondence between the regulator and the Trust.
However, it withheld some information, arguing that if it was to disclose correspondence from trustees public confidence in charities could be lost through fear of consequences.
Mr Cooke appealed, but it was this case that was dismissed at a tribunal at Norwich Magistrates’ Court in recent weeks.
‘We could take the Trust to court for trespassing on common land, but when you’re dealing with organisations with thousands of pounds we simply can’t take them on because we don’t have that sort of funding,’ Mr Cooke said.
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See also: No Man’s Land? How To Claim Forgotten, Unclaimed UK Land For Free through Adverse Possession laws
