Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with reference to paragraphs 1.296 and 1.297 of the Spending Review and Autumn Statement 2015, what progress his Department has made by estimated capacity of land sold since March 2016 in identifying and disposing of land to meet the Government's commitment.

The Government has an ambition to sell surplus land and property to generate £5 billion from sales receipts and create capacity for at least 160,000 homes by the end of March 2020.

In March we published a Government Review: Making Commercial Terms of Government Land Disposals More Transparent. The report committed to publish details of Government land sales annually, with the first publication in summer 2017. The report will include all sales in 2015/16 and 2016/17.

Progress towards meeting the housing ambition is set out in Table 3 of the Public Land for Housing Programme Annual Report published in February 2017. which shows that between 8 May 2015 and 30 September 2016, the Department for Transport released land with capacity for 1,673 homes.

Increasing the supply of land for new homes is central to this Government’s vision of a country that works for everyone. As a major landowner the Government has a crucial role to play in managing its estate more efficiently to secure best value for money for the taxpayer, boost growth and help support the building of new homes.