Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, pursuant to the answer of 21 July 2025, to Question 65368, on Empty Property, what records does the Office of Government Property’s Insite database hold on the number of (a) residential and (b) non-residential public sector properties which are vacant or empty.

The Office of Government Property’s InSite database brings together property information provided by central government departments to support oversight of the government estate.

(a) Residential properties

InSite does not hold centrally validated records on the number of residential public sector properties that are vacant or empty. Responsibility for managing residential properties, including determining and recording vacancy status, rests with the individual owning departments. The Cabinet Office therefore does not hold a central record of vacant or empty residential public sector properties.

(b) Non-residential properties

InSite holds information on non-residential public sector properties that are vacant or surplus, based on information provided by departments to support cross-government estate oversight, with coverage continuing to develop as the system matures. This includes:

• Operational use; and

• a Vacant Space dataset, which records vacant spaces within non-residential buildings that remain in operational use.

Data drawn from InSite is also published on gov.uk at https://www.data.gov. uk/dataset/a3ad62cf-d8a2-4d3b-b3c6-24c35c5e0f71/the-government-property-estate-including-buildings-and-land to ensure continued transparency. These datasets relate to non-residential property only and reflect the information provided by departments at the time of publication.