Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with reference to her Department's statutory guidance entitled Flexible use of capital receipts: direction, updated on 26 March 2025, whether the sale of a local authority allotment would qualify under those rules as a capital receipt.

The government has not changed the rules with respect to disposing of allotments. There remain in place strict criteria to protect allotments, whereby councils must seek approval from the Secretary of state to dispose of a statutory allotment and only sell it where a defined legal threshold is met. From 2016, the previous government introduced a general flexibility that allows councils to use capital receipts to pay for transformation. We are clear that councils should only do this where it provides value for money and it is in the interests of residents. This flexibility does not override any statutory restrictions that may exist on certain types of assets including allotments.