Government Departments: Land

(asked on 12th February 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask Her Majesty's Government for each government department, (1) what was the target for the amount of land to be released for housing in the past ten years; (2) how much land has been disposed of for this purpose and what are the estimated numbers of housing units to be provided; (3) how many of those houses were for (a) affordable housing, and (b) social housing; and (4) what are the targets for this (a) year, and (b) the forthcoming five year period starting with this year.


This question was answered on 26th February 2020

The Public Land for Housing programme (2015-2020) supports the government’s Estate Strategy aim to identify and release surplus central government land. The aim of the programme is to release land with capacity for at least 160,000 homes in England from the central government estate by 31 March 2020. This followed delivery of the 2011-15 Public Land for Housing programme through which surplus land with capacity for 109,000 homes against a target of 100,000 homes was released.

The new performance data released on the Public Land for Housing Programme was published on Thursday 6 th February 2020, (data release attached) and shows that since the start of the current programme to the end of June 2019, departments had sold 508 sites with capacity for c48,000 homes. We confirmed to the Public Accounts Committee in 2019 that land release for 160,000 homes will be achieved to a longer timeframe due to the complexities of disposal and the evolving demands placed on departments’ estates.

Full details of the data requested are set out in the data tables document attached. To note in regards to data on affordable housing, once a site has been sold by the department, the allocation of affordable housing is agreed between local authorities and developers on a site by site basis.

We are currently considering options for a future programme that supports the government’s emerging priorities, reflecting on lessons learnt from both programmes. Decisions on a future programme, including targets for departments, will be made at Spending Review

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