MPs slam government over land sales for housing

An influential committee of MPs has demanded the government spells out how it will sell more land for housebuilding in future after new figures showed departments failed to dispose of sites needed for more than 90,000 homes.

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said data showed the government had failed in its role as a major landowner to meet land disposal targets, exacerbating an already acute shortfall of new social housing.

In a report published today the PAC said committee members were “incredibly disappointed” that the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) will miss its target for selling enough land to build 160,000 homes by 2020.

The committee said the MHCLG had failed to sell land needed to build 91,000 homes, more than half (57%) of the overall target.

“This target was clearly unrealistic from the outset and, as we were concerned to discover during the inquiry, lacked a sufficient and rigorous evidence base when it was originally set,” the report said.

Whikle the Cabinet Office is set to achieve its £5bn proceeds target the PAC said this was largely because of an unplanned sale, the £1.46bn disposal of UK railway arches to US investment firm Blackstone Group, a situation described by the committee as “reliant upon luck instead of judgment and unacceptable”.

PAC chair and Labour MP Meg Hillier said the government was in a unique position to release land for new homes, but the objectives of its disposal programme were “chaotic and confused”.

“We are baffled that the programmes were not designed with a view to how many homes were needed of what type, and where nor how the proceeds will be used.

“Land disposal targets were set without a rigorous evidence base of what could actually be delivered. It is no real surprise, then, that the government will now fail to meet its target to sell enough land by 2020 for 160,000 homes.

“But with a gap of 91,000 fewer potential homes than anticipated, we are extremely concerned that the nation’s housing shortage will only get worse.

Hillier said building affordable homes should be a key part of the objectives of the government’s land disposal strategy, but the committee was concerned at the department’s “disregard for how the release of public land could be used to deliver affordable homes, particularly social homes for rent.

“We call on the government to set out a decisive course of action for how it will execute its land disposal strategy so that it translates into actual homes for the people that need them most,” Hillier added.