Defence Online

MOD sell off land for new homes to be built

Homeland September 6, 2016

Plans to release Defence Estate land for the building of new homes has been announced today by Defence Secretary Michael Fallon.

Whilst creating a more efficient and effective Defence Estate, the 13 sites will allow thousands of new homes to be built. More than 1,200 hectares of surplus public sector land is being released across the sites which stretch right across the UK.

Some 17,000 new homes are expected to be built on the land, contributing to the government’s target of building 160,000 new homes by 2020. All of the money generated from land sales will be invested back into meeting the needs of the Armed Forces.

Two sites included in the release, were themselves question by the Defence Secretary in his speech on Defence Reform, are the golf courses at RAF Henlow and Southwick Park. In the same speech he confirmed the estate optimisation strategy would aim to reduce the size of the defence estate by 30% over 25 years.

This is the third announcement of sites to be released by the Defence Estate, and means the MOD has now freed up enough brownfield and surplus public sector land for up to 39,000 new homes, expected to generate around £930M.

Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said: “We are getting rid of land that we don’t need to build homes that we do, generating hundreds of millions of pounds in the process. Our commitment to protect and increase the budget for our armed forces means that every penny of that will be reinvested into defence, helping to keep Britain safe.”

The news also comes as Network Rail announces plans to unlock land for 12,000 new homes by 2020. Almost 200 sites across the country have been identified as offering development opportunities for housing.

The optimisation strategy aims to reduce the size of the MOD estate which totals just under half a million hectares by selling off sites for which there is no longer a long-term Defence requirement. This will reduce unnecessary estate running costs for Defence and result in a smaller, but better, Defence estate which caters for the future Armed Forces and delivers upon the commitments made in Strategic Defence & Security Review 2015 (SDSR15). The MOD expects to make further announcements as part of the strategy later in 2016.

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2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) DE Defence Estate Defence Reform housing Michael Fallon MP MOD SDSR UK

Post written by: Vicky Maggiani

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