We are grateful to Greg Mulholland, Liberal Democrat MP for Leeds North West, for his permission to publish in full a letter he wrote recently to Nigel Walter, Managing Director of UK Land Investments.

Nigel Walter
Managing Director
United Kingdom Land Investments
Berkeley Square House
Berkeley Square
Mayfair
London
W1J 6BD 

7th November 2006 

Dear Nigel 

Thank you for contacting me and for sharing your opinions on the subdivision and sale of undeveloped land as investment opportunities in which UKLI is engaged.  

It was useful to hear your perspective on the fly-by-night operations that it is well documented are deliberately mis-selling land, it was interesting that you also want to see this practice outlawed as you feel it brings the ‘industry’ into disrepute.  

However, as I made it clear to you when we met, whilst trying to outlaw this deliberate mis-selling is a key part of my campaign, my wider objective is to restrict and/or regulate the entire practice of the subdivision and sale of undeveloped land as investment opportunities. This is something that would of course impact directly on UKLI and any other organisations ability to continue to operate in this sector, so as I said at the time, there is much about which we fundamentally disagree! 

Following further discussions and research, I have now come to the conclusion that the best initial way to address this is to bring the practice under the remit of the FSA, possibly as a collective investment, possibly by introducing land as a category of investment that needs to be regulated in the same way as other investments and I am now convinced that the ‘industry’ does need to be regulated by the FSA.

Also, as you know, my Sale of Green Belt Land Bill introduced in Parliament this year which would make it illegal to sell designated Green Belt land on the basis of future development at all. Although, due to the numbers of Private Member’s Bills on the order paper, my Bill did not receive its second reading, this is still an avenue which I will be exploring in other ways.  

Clearly, these aims conflict with your own ideas on what measures should be taken to address the current nature and practices of this area of business. Consequently, there is no point in us having any further discussions upon and around this subject and as a result, I would be grateful if you would refrain from suggesting that UKLI are working with me in any way.  

Yours sincerely 


Greg Mulholland
Member of Parliament for Leeds North West

Mr Mulholland wrote this letter following the use of his name by UKLI in a number of web pages and press releases which seemed to imply that he was working with UKLI to tackle misselling in the land banking industry. In fact, this was not the case.

Most references to Mr Mulholland by UKLI have now been withdrawn, per his request, however a sample still exists here.

In the interest of balance, PropertySCAM is happy to publish UKLI's reply (PDF link) said by Nigel Walter to have been sent by him to Mr Mulholland.