Central Government

Beneficial Ownership Transparency

Directing a cross-government Alpha to determine who really benefits from property ownership in the UK.

The problem

Understanding who ultimately benefits from property ownership in the UK is complex, fragmented, and opaque – even for experts. Data is spread across multiple registers, policy obligations are unclear, and responsibility is often indirect or obscured.

MHCLG asked whether a combination of user-centred design, policy design, and data modelling could make beneficial ownership clearer, more enforceable, and easier to navigate.

I was Project Director for this GDS Alpha, holding overall accountability for:

  • Project direction, quality, and outcomes
  • Team wellbeing and effective ways of working
  • Budget management and delivery within agreed constraints
  • Alignment between client expectations, evidence, and feasibility
  • Representing the client to the team, and the team to the client
  • Listening to the team and making decisions about scope, approach and risks
  • Keeping sight of how the work fit into wider departmental and cross-government strategies

This was a Government Digital Service Alpha, working within the Service Standard and GOV.UK conventions, and focused on reducing risk ahead of potential Beta investment.

What I did

Mine was a formal Project Director role, sitting above design and delivery while remaining closely involved in shaping decisions. Alongside the Design Lead and Delivery Manager, I formed part of the Project Leadership Team — holding the tension between user needs, policy intent, technical feasibility, and delivery realities.

Creating understanding

A large part of the role involved creating understanding and alignment. Visual models and diagrams were used to map systems, responsibilities, incentives, and failure points to make complex structures discussable and testable.

Three hypotheses

Working closely with the department, three hypotheses were prioritised, each with explicit riskiest assumptions to guide the Alpha. The Alpha tested these through user research, policy design, technical exploration, and service modelling.

Hypothesis one

We believe that by developing guidance, incentives and penalties for failing to meet beneficial ownership responsibilities beneficial owners will:

  • Become more aware of their responsibilities and obligations
  • Be incentivised to comply to meet their obligations

Hypothesis two

We believe developing a unique identifier for individual beneficial owners that is used across all existing government registers will:

  • Enable data matching across registers
  • Lead to users being able to meet their end goals

Hypothesis three

We believe that by developing a new dedicated register to obtain and provide beneficial ownership information will:

  • Enable users to meet their end goal without having to navigate a complex system that does not meet their needs
  • Create a single source of truth for beneficial ownership information

Project approach

I find Alphas the trickiest of all GDS project phases, because to be effective you need to be deliberate and focused, and that often means compromising on scope. The approach that best met the project outcomes and tested our hypotheses was to focus on Service Design, Tech, and Policy, deprioritising Organisation and Product Design.

Policy: Policy changes were needed to support the service, so this is where work focused for hypothesis one.

Design: The design of a new register was critical to success, so this tackled hypothesis three.

Technology: The underlying technology, combining new tech and existing data sources, underpinned the whole project and addressed hypothesis two.

Key moments

Getting together in person

We embraced remote working, but being able to bring people together at key moments proved invaluable. For the policy design work, the team met in London for a productive workshop enabling full engagement for a full day without typical digital distractions.

Taking the decision to pivot

Working in an agile way required being prepared to take decisions when evidence or constraints demanded it. A difficult mid-project scope change was made to ensure work could proceed in the right way, at the right time.

Testing with conveyancers

After designing policy proposals, the impact on affected parties needed testing. Real property conveyancers were convened, walked through plans, and asked for reactions. This culminated all work completed, and they provided candid feedback.

The results

We completed the work on schedule and on budget with three hypotheses validated and an established route to Beta.

We await news of future plans from the department, but confident the need for the work is clear, should the government wish to prioritise it.

“The in person workshop that you organised with MHCLG, HMLR, HMRC and Companies House was masterfully organised, artfully facilitated and had a fantastic tone” — Service Design Lead