Government Departments: Land and Property

(asked on 19th December 2023) - View Source

Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, if he will make an estimate of the total value of (a) land, (b) buildings and (c) other property owned by the Government.


Answered by
Alex Burghart Portrait
Alex Burghart
Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
This question was answered on 12th January 2024

The Government Property Strategy, published August 2022, commits to a smaller, better, greener estate, disposing of surplus, under-utilised and poor quality property to enable efficiency savings and bring in capital receipts. The full report can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/government-property-strategy-2022-2030

Full information on the spend for each site and the functions performed as well as property and land leases across the Government is held by individual departments and is not centrally held. The answer would therefore incur a disproportionate cost to the Cabinet Office. Additionally, disclosing information on rent and leases is often deemed commercially sensitive and may undermine businesses' trust in us as a commercial partner.

Information on the total land value of Government owned land, buildings and other property is published on gov.uk as part of the State of the Estate 2021-2022 (SofTE) report, Section 1.1, found here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6436b48e877741000c68d867/State-of-The-Estate-21-22-Accessible.pdf

From the SofTE report, Section 1.1, the Central government estate was valued at £188.2bn. The total value of (a) land was £4.7bn with (b) buildings and (c) other property being a combined £183.5bn between 2020-21.

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