Commentary Section 1: Registers of persons seeking to acquire land to build a home
5.Section 1 imposes a duty on relevant authorities to maintain a register of individuals (either acting alone or organised into groups) who have expressed an interest in acquiring a serviced plot of land in order to build a house for such an individual to occupy as a home.
6.Section 1 goes on to define what constitutes a ‘relevant authority’ (the definition reflects the definition of local planning authority in section 37 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004) but it also confers on the Secretary of State a regulation-making power allowing the Secretary of State to provide for other public authorities to be considered as the relevant authorities for specified areas. The regulation-making power can also be used to provide that any newly-specified relevant authority can be designated as the authority for its area to the exclusion of any other authority, in order to avoid the existence of multiple registers for an area.