Inside the government’s Great British Property Sell-Off

The chancellor Rachel Reeves told the House of Commons last week that she wants to “put an end” to wasteful spending in government. Her first action, she added, will be to speed up the sale of empty government buildings and disused land.

Analysis for The Times reveals that if the government disposed of all “surplus estates” already up for sale, it could unlock enough land to build about 130,000 homes.

This would be the equivalent of more than a third of the government’s new annual housebuilding target of 370,000 homes.

The figure, based on the 400 sites for sale on the government property finder database, was calculated by the planning consultancy Lichfields based on industry averages for housing density per hectare, plus the amount