Alex Cunningham – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Alex Cunningham on 2016-03-08.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will extend her Department’s OpenDefra initiative to the Rural Payments Agency and Land Registry.

George Eustice

The OpenDefra initiative extends to the whole of Defra including the Rural Payments Agency. The initiative does not extend to the Land Registry.

The Rural Land Register, the Land Management System that has replaced it, or other systems maintained by the Rural Payments Agency (RPA), do not look to establish land ownership. The RPA is required to maintain information on land use, in England because land use, and the entitlement to use it, is one of the determining factors in relation to eligibility to claim funds that RPA validates.

We are currently reviewing, the Data Protection Act, confidentiality of information held and intellectual property rights to determine whether information on land use can be released under the open data initiative.