Whitehall’s plan to top up the coffers through government property sales pushes on towards its £5bn target. Louisa Clarence-Smith reports
The big government property sell-off continues.
Whitehall has pledged to raise £5bn from property sales by 2020, selling everything from unused airfields and barracks to surplus prisons and abandoned labs. Meanwhile, civil servants will be banded together in new cross-departmental hubs, as offices are set to be cut by 75% by 2023.
The government’s annual State of the Estate report, which sets out what Whitehall departments are doing with the properties they own, has revealed its estate reduced by just 3.6% in 2014-15 – its lowest proportion since 2010.
Minister for the Cabinet Office Matt Hancock, launching the report last week, announced new tough measures for both Whitehall departments and local authorities to publish details of their surplus assets.
Through the Right to Contest and Government Property Finder, members of the public are being encouraged to report underused or surplus
public property which could be sold.
Opportunities for private sector investment abound, and no more so than in London, where historic assets including Blythe House, W14, and Holloway Prison, N7, are among the proposed sales.
Supplemented by data from the London Land Commission, Estates Gazette looks at which departments released the most land nationally in 2014-15 and which departments have the most assets left to lose in the capital.
