Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, whether his Department is taking steps to help tackle potential distortions of the property market by foreign ownership of residential property in the UK.

The Government applies a non-resident Stamp Duty Land Tax surcharge of 2 percentage points on overseas purchasers of UK residential property. Companies House collects information about all overseas-based entities owning UK land and we have powers in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act to require more information about land ownership structures, which could help us tackle corruption in the property market and understand where we can take further action.

We recently ran a consultation about increasing the transparency of trusts who own land, which closed on 21 February. Trusts have been identified as a significant blocker to land transparency as their details are kept off all public registers and the results of this consultation will inform how we can intervene.