Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what proportion of the office space owned or leased by her Department is not in regular use; what the total (a) rental and (b) retail value is of all such office space; and if she will place in the Library a copy of her most recent departmental real estate valuation.

Defra offices are assessed as either being required to deliver departmental functions (forming the core estate) or surplus to this requirement (non-core).

Defra's priority for surplus holdings is to reduce property costs by exiting leasehold agreements, selling freeholds or by sub-letting to external tenants. The proportion of Defra office property vacant, held by the Defra property holding centre, as at 29^th June is 5.76%.

The actual rental depends on how long the office space would be vacant, making it difficult to calculate, with no rental values held for the freehold office estate.

The Government Property Unit (GPU) has created a portal - Find Me Some Government Space (https://www.gov.uk/find-government-property) - for more efficient marketing of surplus land and buildings. This is searchable by developers, community groups and the general public.