Who owns my neighbourhood?

What is it?

Who Owns My Neighbourhood is a mapping website that helps you find out who owns plots of land in your area. It was built by Thumbprint Cooperative in partnership with the Open data initiative at Kirklees Council. Information and data on land ownership is shown on the website in a map format. Who Owns My Neighbourhood aims to give people a starting point for getting things done in their own areas by making it easier to see who owns which plots of land in their area. It can help people to better understand and to use land ownership information for public benefit, for example by coming up with community-led uses for land, from one-off events like community picnics to setting up friends groups or taking over unused buildings.

How the idea developed

The idea for the site came through as a response to the experiences of two groups of people active in their local community in Huddersfield. The first group were involved in a campaign to preserve a landmark building, and the second wanted to organise an outdoor play event for children on some open land which was treated as "common". In both cases, for different reasons, it was difficult to find out who owned the land, and this acted as a barrier to people coming together around places and activities.

The site was awarded £30,000 through the Nesta programme Make IT Local to be prototyped and launched using Kirklees data. The pilot site can be viewed online, it features Kirklees land ownership data only at the moment. The service continues to be available in Kirklees, and a user recently emailed to say that it had been "incredibly useful" in a project to regenerate derelict plots of land, but Who Owns My Neighbourhood has not been further developed beyond the Nesta investment period, perhaps because it is still a  supplementary service to existing land use information, rather than replacing current systems. However, the site could be used for future development with planning teams in other councils, or for other applications.




Want to know more?

Contact : Andrew@thumbprint.coop