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Government urged to ‘get its act together’ as Malthouse admits land disposal target will be missed
The government will fall short of its target on selling public land for new homes, housing minister Kit Malthouse has admitted.
In an update today, Mr Malthouse revealed the government will miss its target of releasing enough public land to build 160,000 new homes by 2020.
“While sufficient land has been identified for 160,000 homes, it is clear that the ambition to release this land by 2020 will be achieved to a longer timeframe,” the minister wrote in a foreword to the update.
As of last December, just 402 sites with capacity for around 38,000 homes had been sold by government departments since 2011 – just 24% of the 2020 target.
Mr Malthouse added: “Departments have agreed immediate actions to identify more land to bring into the programme and to accelerate disposals where possible to improve performance.”
It comes as a senior civil servant admitted to a Public Accounts Committee inquiry on the housing market this week that the government’s overall target of 300,000 new homes a year is “very ambitious”.
In today’s update, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) said it expects departments to have released enough land for around 65,000 homes by 2020 – just 41% of the target.
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The National Audit Office (NAO), which released its own detailed report on the release of public land today, said it does not expect the government to meet the 160,000 home target until after 2025.
Among the problems identified for the delays are public bodies still using land, planning issues affecting large sites, land requiring decontamination and, in some cases, the government not legally owning a site.
NAO also found that the government sold 176 pieces of public land for £1 or less between April 2015 and March 2018. Of these, five were bigger than 25 acres.
The body also attacked ministers over “insufficient data to say with certainty on a government level where the sale proceeds have been spent”.
NAO added: “It would be a concern if departments are selling land and property to support day-to-day running costs rather than to invest in refurbishing existing assets or purchasing new ones.”
MHCLG also came under fire from NAO over “limited” improvements to the data it collects in this area. “MHCLG told NAO that it has started to collect data on affordable homes but this has not yet been audited or published,” the body said.
It added: “Until April 2019, MHCLG had not published an annual report on the land for the new homes programme since February 2017 despite committing to do so, and has not published any information on new homes built under the entire programme, which the [Public Accounts] Committee asked for.”
Meg Hillier, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said: “Not only is its programme highly unlikely to meet its target by 2020, it is also unable to provide basic information about the number of affordable homes, and homes for key workers, being built.
“It is also unacceptable that the government does not have a national picture of where the proceeds from the land sales have gone.
“The government must get its act together if it is to deliver much-needed new homes.”
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