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Harold Higgins found it rather inconvenient to watch television in the potting shed at the end of his garden. He thought this to be outweighed, however, by the saving from not buying a TV licence.
It had long been taken for granted that all land in England was owned by someone, be it an individual or an organisation or the Crown. The linking of the computer systems at the Land Registry to those of the Ordnance Survey had, however, ended that assumption. The inaccuracy of maps on which land ownership had been defined since the Norman Conquest meant that some areas were not owned by anyone.
At first, the government assumed these could simply be taken by the Crown, but it soon become apparent