Liz- NO. The NPPG says relevant authorities cannot currently adopt additional eligibility criteria to restrict entry on the register to local people. The legislation doesn’t however prevent authorities from asking for additional information which they consider relevant to make informed local decisions when they exercise their duties under the Act (in your case- land disposal with a weighting system). This means you can ask for this information on the register as ‘optional’, but you cannot prevent someone from registering if they don’t provide it. The NPPG is supportive in this regard as it says authorities should consider what additional optional information could be requested, subject to this being relevant, proportional and reasonable. You can therefore ask for local connection information on your register as long as this is optional- indeed the Toolkit (which has a long section on local connection) suggests you do so as it will help enable you to decide if/how you want to dispose (or purchase) your own land for those who have a local connection on the register. This is common in Germany for example. You couldn’t of course apply local connection/weighting considerations where a private landowner sells land/plots, although they might decide they want to (eg. a CLT).
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