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

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to ensure there is clear and transparent information about the availability of brownfield land for development.

The National Land Use Database is available online and provides statistical information for national and local authority trends in previously developed (brownfield) land.

The newly updated Local Government Transparency Code will require local authorities to publish details of all land and building assets annually, helping increase accountability over the use of council assets and the scope for disposing of surplus brownfield land for regeneration and new homes.

The Government is releasing for development its own surplus and redundant land and property. As part of this comprehensive programme, the Government Property Unit has recently launched a new application on Gov.uk, which can be accessed by the public and developers, which provides details of all government land and property assets.

To help meet the Government’s ambitions to have planning permission for housing in place on 90% of suitable brownfield sites by 2020, we are currently considering how we can further improve the published information that is available on brownfield land suitable for housing. We will report on this in due course.

The associated website links are as follows:

National Land Use Database:

http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/datasetList.do?JSAllowed=true&Function=&%24ph=60&CurrentPageId=60&step=1&CurrentTreeIndex=-2&searchString=land+use&datasetFamilyId=1235&Next.x=14&Next.y=2&nsjs=true&nsck=false&nssvg=false&nswid=1366

Local Government Transparency Code:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/308185/Local_Government_Transparency_Code_2014_Final.pdf

Find government property:

https://www.gov.uk/find-government-property