Fund public services from public wealth. Leave private wealth in private hands.

Our platform is one idea applied without exception: the land and natural wealth of these islands is the shared inheritance of the British nation, and it should be used for our shared benefit, while wealth individuals make with their own hands belongs to them.

See what it means for your household

Our statement

In an era where Britain's prosperity is under sustained attack, from a broken tax system that punishes work and rewards monopoly, and from a political class that treats this country as an economic zone rather than the home of a people, we present a bolder vision.

Look honestly at the country's trajectory. A generation ago the typical home cost around three times the average wage; today it is closer to nine. Homeownership among the under-35s has collapsed from over half to under two-fifths. Real wages are barely higher than they were in 2008. British women now have barely 1.4 children each, the lowest on record and well short of replacement. Family life has become unaffordable. Hospital waiting lists run into the millions. Britain has not stood still; we are in freefall.

This is what happens when a nation ceases to incentivise its own future betterment, ceases to reward its producers and workers, instead falling prey to an extractive rentier class disconnected with its wider long-term health. Every policy is lobbied on and shaped to enable private capture of public expenditure, and where spending does improve things, these benefits are sold back to us in higher rents and higher mortgages. Every effort at redress is blocked by the same rentier class. Work is taxed to the bone, the concept of monopoly and economic rent is hidden from language and thought, and decisions about our economy, our borders and our laws are taken to serve the British people last. It will not change until the ground under it does.

And the two solutions on offer both lead back to the same place. One is the Thatcherite mindset that caused the boom, saw council homes sold and rarely replaced, Council Tax fixed to 1991 valuations, buy-to-let given the same lending terms as a home to live in, and credit loosened until the mortgage rather than the wage set the price of a site. Its clients are the banks, the landlords, and developers whose balance sheets these booms engorge. The other is the failed philosophy of socialist tax and spend, courting entrenched public sector interests, dependents and suppliers, alongside newcomers as a voting bloc- all while doing nothing about the ground they would live on. Its clients are the public-sector unions, the state's contractors and the growing parallel societies of welfare dependent foreigners. Neither is truly hostile to the other; each keeps the other's clients fed. Housing benefit is paid to landlords, the state bidding up the price of housing against the group that pays for everything. Two opposite ideologies, one duopoly, one class that pays for it all: you- the productive British worker.

So we say: enough. Enough of taxes on wages, trade and enterprise, on everything British people make and do, while the value of the land beneath us, created by no owner, flows untaxed into private hands. Enough of a tax code that fines the productive and endows the idle. Enough of a housing market in which a young couple doing everything right cannot afford the country their grandparents bought on one wage.

Our remedy is simple, and it rests on a principle everyone already accepts: pay for what you use. So take up a good site and pay for it, as you would for anything else you use. One charge on the value of land, on every site, no exemptions and no freeloaders. In return, a dramatic reduction in all the taxes that penalise and discourage producers and workers- low and stable house prices- and a growing economy we can all benefit from.

If you want a revived Britain, where productive citizens come first, where wages are high because they are no longer taxed to feed rent, and where homes are affordable because land is no longer a hoarder's asset, then The Georgist Party of Britain is for you.

One annual land value charge

A yearly charge on the value of land and property, assessed by a national valuation office and revalued every year. Land cannot be moved offshore, hidden in a trust or written off against expenses. It is the one tax base that cannot escape. Our national wealth should be for the nation's benefit, and not used as a means to launder and park foreign money, or protect the status of an unaccountable rentier class.

Replaces council tax, business rates, stamp duty and inheritance tax outright
Charged on the site, not on what you build on it, improve your home and pay no more
Deferral for pensioners on low incomes, settled from the estate

A single flat rate of income tax

One flat rate on earned income and nothing else on your labour. No National Insurance, no employer National Insurance, no VAT on what you spend, no corporation tax on the businesses you build.

National Insurance abolished, for employees and employers alike
VAT abolished, a 20% cut on almost everything you buy
Corporation tax abolished; profits are taxed once, as income, when they reach people

Homes at the cost of a home

Much of a house price is the location premium. An annual charge on land value makes hoarding expensive and building attractive, keeping house prices stable and bringing first homes within reach of ordinary earnings.

Empty plots and long-term vacant homes pay the full charge
Planning reform so that permission follows demand, not objection
Rents fall as the charge cannot be passed on to tenants

Infrastructure that pays for itself

A new station, a new line, a new grid connection raises the value of every plot it serves. Capturing that uplift is how Britain builds again without borrowing from its children.

Uplift from public investment funds the investment
Ring-fenced national programme for rail, grid, water and broadband
Local authorities keep a share of the charge raised in their area

Nature's other gifts

Land is the largest gift of nature, but not the only one. The sea around Britain, the minerals beneath it, spectrum, water abstraction, fishing quota and the right to pollute are all national assets, and should be leased to British enterprise for the nation rather than given away.

Auctioned licences for spectrum, quota and extraction
Pigouvian charges on pollution and congestion, kept simple and visible
Fuel duty retained until road pricing replaces it

Enterprise left alone

Britain does not have a shortage of taxes on effort. Under this platform, the wealth you create through work, invention or enterprise is never taxed a second time.

No tax on machinery, buildings, stock or plant
No penalty for hiring a British worker
Savings and investment returns untaxed once income tax has been paid

The charge in plain terms

Beyond the house price: what the charge really falls on

Georgism taxes the value of the location, the premium a plot commands because of the nation around it, never the bricks, labour or enterprise on top of it. House prices are only a convenient proxy for that value, and the proxy is worst exactly where land value matters most. The ONS put the value of Britain's land at about £8.5 trillion in 2023, roughly three-fifths of the entire national wealth. A national valuation assesses the site directly, so nothing below escapes it:

Empty and brownfield land

A derelict site in a city centre has no house price at all, yet the plot may be worth millions. Valued on the site, not the building, hoarded land pays the same as the street around it. Holding it idle stops being free.

The planning premium

Farmland near a town is worth around £25,000 a hectare; the same field with planning permission is worth millions. That uplift is created by the community's permission, not the owner's effort, and it is pure land value.

Underused city sites

A bungalow or a car park surrounded by towers is taxed today as if the tower weren't possible. Site valuation prices the plot at what the location supports, so the charge gently pushes prime land towards the use the nation needs.

Infrastructure uplift

The Elizabeth line added billions to the value of land along its route, value created by the public, pocketed privately. An annual site charge recycles that uplift into the next railway, grid line and station.

Whose inheritance

The ground of Britain, held in trust for Britain

Land is unlike every other asset. It cannot be moved abroad, it cannot be created, and everyone born here has to live on whatever of it there is. That makes who holds it a national question, not merely a private one. Four things follow.

A register that names the real owner

Every acre of British land held through an overseas company, trust or fund is entered on a public register with the beneficial owner named in full. Owners who will not be named cannot buy or sell. Anonymity is what turns a national inheritance into a private parking space.

The sea and the seabed are ours too

The waters around Britain, the minerals beneath the seabed and the right to fish them belong to the nation and should be leased for it. Quota is auctioned rather than handed to a handful of vessels, and the money stays in British coastal towns.

No strategic land in foreign state hands

Ports, airfields, utilities and the land beside them are screened and, where necessary, closed to acquisition by foreign state-backed entities. Britain's defences and supply chains are not a line item in somebody else's portfolio.

Land for living on, not for holding

A charge on site value makes holding land idle expensive and building on it cheap. Homes get built, first-time buyers compete on the cost of a building rather than a plot, and Britain's ground serves the people standing on it.