Draft Provision of Information (Contractual Control) (Registered Land) Regulations 2026
(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)
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The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Provision of Information (Contractual Control) (Registered Land) Regulations 2026.
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. The draft regulations were laid before the House on 9 March. Before I proceed further, I draw the Committee’s attention to a minor correction that has been made to the regulations. At regulation 4(3)(c)(i), the words “the right” were printed without a space between them. This was noticed after the statutory instrument had been laid, and was rectified by means of a correction slip. The correction is purely typographical and does not affect the meaning or operation of the regulations.
On the substance of the regulations, the Government’s considered view is that the land market in England and Wales has been too opaque for too long. Developers routinely use contractual control agreements—such as options, conditional contracts, pre-emption rights and promotion agreements—to secure rights over land without any requirement to disclose the details of those arrangements.
In the absence of any obligation to disclose the details of such arrangements, local planning authorities cannot see who controls development land in their area, smaller developers waste time and money pursuing sites already locked up, and communities have no visibility over the development trajectory of land around them. While some agreements may appear on His Majesty’s Land Registry title registers, where a notice or restriction has been entered, there is currently no reliable or comprehensive picture of who controls land, short of ownership, across England and Wales.
We think there is a compelling case for greater transparency. In their wisdom on this point—if not on many others—the previous Government agreed, and provided powers through the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 to address this issue. If Parliament approves them, the draft regulations will give effect to those powers.
With a view to implementing the powers in question, the previous Government consulted on proposals between January and March 2024, receiving responses from developers, lawyers, local authorities, land agents and members of the public. The final regulations we are considering today reflect that feedback and the consultation with the sector, and they include some changes to narrow their scope, which I will come on to detail.
The regulations create a duty on those who benefit from the agreement, such as developers and land promoters, to provide key information about the given rights to HM Land Registry, which will then publish it in a free-to-access geospatial database from April 2028. The regulations require the disclosure of four types of right: options, conditional contracts, pre-emption rights, and rights to direct or request that landowners enter into a transfer of lease, typically found in promotion agreements. They apply to registered land in England and Wales, and they set out exemptions to ensure that the requirements are targeted and proportionate.
Those who are granted a right must provide the required information within 60 days of a trigger event—that is, the creation, reassignment or amendment of a right. Submissions must be made digitally through a regulated conveyancer. Parties typically already hold the required information. Throughout the development of the regulations, we have considered the burden on the sector and minimised it wherever possible. HMLR may refuse to register a notice or restriction on the register of the title until the requirements have been met. Failure to comply is a criminal offence under section 225 of the 2023 Act.
I want to make it clear that the regulations do not require the disclosure of detailed commercial conditions, such as those relating to price or financial terms. The required information is limited to key information that advances our primary objective, which is transparency. The regulations also do not apply retrospectively. The previous Government consulted on a five-year retrospective window, but we have decided not to pursue that approach. That is a deliberate choice to minimise the burden on developers and land promoters, while still achieving meaningful transparency.
The regulations matter because transparency is essential for a truly competitive land market, and it is particularly important to certain players within the house building system. Committee members will know that small and medium-sized enterprise developers have seen their market share significantly shrink since the 1980s, when they delivered 40% of the country’s homes. SME house builders are essential to meeting the Government’s housing ambitions and supporting local economies, and we need to do more than just simply arrest their decline. We need to put in place the conditions that allow them to thrive.
The Government are acting to support SME house builders by increasing their access to land, providing further financial assistance and easing the burden of regulation, but we need to pull every lever we can. Helping them to identify genuinely available sites will remove another barrier that they face, and will therefore help to diversify the house building sector, so that more SMEs can get back on the pitch and help us to boost housing supply.
The regulations will also mean that local planning authorities will be able to see who controls development land in their area, and it will give communities greater visibility over the development trajectory of the land around them, enabling earlier and more collaborative conversations. On that basis, I hope the Committee will agree that these are sensible, proportionate and, I hope, straightforward regulations that it can support.
Matthew Pennycook
I thank the shadow Minister for his thoughtful remarks in scrutinising these important regulations. I stress again that the regulations have benefits for local planning authorities, for communities and, in particular, for SME developers.
We could have a long and extensive debate on strategic land banks and how the house building system works—although I am sure that the Committee does not want to go there. We very much contend that there are concerns about the use of contractual control agreements and what it does to stifle competition in the house building market. Promoting transparency and competition is at the heart of the objective of the regulations. The database will allow smaller developers in particular to identify genuinely available sites from the outset, rather than them discovering too later that a site is already tied up through an option or promotion agreement. As a result, the regulations will remove that wasted time and cost as a barrier to smaller builders entering the market.
As I mentioned in my opening remarks, in taking forward the regulations and looking at the feedback received in the consultation that the previous Government undertook, we have been at pains to minimise the burden on the sector wherever possible, and we were deliberate in ensuring that the regulations were proportionate when drawing them up. The Government’s assessment is that the overall impact on business will be de minimis. We do not expect any significant impact on the public sector either, as local authorities will benefit from having access to the data at no cost.
I will briefly mention HMLR, which I do not want to overlook. We do not think the contractual control database will add significant burdens. It is a new, separate digital service that does not add to HMLR’s existing registration workload. Contractual control information will be submitted through a dedicated channel and processed separately from title registration applications. HMLR recognised the cost of introducing contractual controls regulation, which will be funded through its financial framework, as part of the 2025 spending review that it agreed.
On commencement and implementation, the regulations come into force on 6 April 2027, and HMLR’s digital submission service will be available from that date. The transitional period gives grantees six months to report agreements that were entered into before commencement and allow time for the system to work through them. As I mentioned, we took the decision not to apply the regulations retrospectively to minimise the burden on the sector. As always, consultation with the sector is ongoing, but the previous Government engaged extensively with the sector through their consultation, and the drafting of the regulations reflects that feedback.
Notwithstanding the shadow Minister’s points, which I hope I have addressed, I draw the Committee back to what the regulations will achieve. They will enable developers to identify available land more quickly and effectively, and local authorities to see who controls the development of land in their area. As I have said, that will give communities greater visibility over the trajectory of land around them. I hope that, for the reasons around transparency and greater competition that I have emphasised, the Committee will approve the regulations.
Question put and agreed to.