NAO reveals investigation into government land disposal

The National Audit Office (NAO) has released a report into the government’s land disposal targets, which it says may be hard to achieve.

The NAO has suggested that the government would struggle to meet its 2020 target for land disposal and did not plan sufficiently to meet their goals in previous years. The report claims the government lacked the economic evidence and supporting documentation to justify previous targets.

The government currently does not expect to reach the 160,000 homes target until after 2025, rather than 2020. The Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) estimates that some 40,500 homes have been ‘brought to market’ since 2010 on land released under the previous (2011-2015) and current programmes.

The NAO made the following recommendations:

• As a minimum, the annual report should cover: the number and estimated capacity of sites released, details of sites identified for future disposal including their risk rating, sales proceeds, details of sites released (including postcodes), and construction of new homes by type and tenure.
• Departments should make public their estate strategies to demonstrate how they decide that land is surplus. All departments should outline the factors they will consider to ensure that each sale represents value for money, and set out how they are identifying any wider benefits, including for staff and key workers, which contribute to the Departments’ objectives.

MHCLG has identified several challenges to delivering the target. For example, public bodies might still be using land to provide services; sales of some large, complex sites have been delayed due to planning issues; sites might require decontamination; and in some cases, progress is hampered by not legally owning or controlling all the sites that could potentially count towards their targets (for example sites owned by NHS foundation trusts).

The NAO’s analysis shows that of the 1,500 sites sold between April 2015 and March 2018, 176 (12%) were sold for £1 or less. The government has agreed with the recommendations made by the NAO and promised to improve reporting on public land sales.

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