The government has published draft regulations to create a public register of land agreements, requiring property developers to disclose certain contractual rights over land in England and Wales.
Under the proposed rules – the Provision of Information (Contractual Control) (Registered Land) Regulations 2026 – developers and promoters would need to report details of Contractual Control Agreements to HM Land Registry. The measures are intended to improve transparency around land deals that are often not publicly recorded.
If approved by Parliament, the regulations are expected to come into force on 6 April 2027, with disclosed information to be published in a public dataset from April 2028.
“Transparency in the land market is hard to argue against, but the Government risks introducing a problem in search of a solution,” said Neil Kelly, head of land and development at Bidwells.
Kelly fears that a new public register “could create extra red tape and unintended consequences, particularly for the SME builders the policy is supposed to support”.
“If ministers truly want to help smaller developers deliver homes, bringing back Help to Buy would have a far more meaningful impact,” he added.
Kate Macmillan, founder and director of KMDC and former Development Director at St James Group and St William Homes, both part of the Berkeley Group, believes the government’s announcement is is yet another disincentive for developers at exactly the wrong moment.
She commented: “We’re in the grip of a housing crisis and measures like this risk becoming a costly distraction. There’s a real danger that the expense of maintaining such a register simply translates into an additional burden on development, functioning in practice as another property tax.
“The more fundamental point is that if you’re serious about acquiring a piece of land, you should be in direct correspondence with the landowner anyway not relying on a public register to do that groundwork for you.
“There’s also a community impact that shouldn’t be ignored. Putting option agreements and heads of terms into the public domain before any pre-application engagement has taken place risks raising expectations or fears in local communities long before there’s any real clarity about what a site can actually deliver.
“And for SMEs in particular, pre-emptions and options are genuinely valuable tools. They allow smaller developers to de-risk a scheme and manage cash flow in a way that makes marginal sites viable. Anything that undermines confidence in those mechanisms will hit the smaller end of the market hardest.”