Basher Eyre. Some rights reserved.
Governments of every hue seem obsessed with strategies designed to kill not just two birds with one stone, but entire flocks. The Plan for Growth, stemming from the March 2011 budget, pledged to build “as many as 100,000 new, much-needed homes and support as many as 25,000 jobs by 2015” through sales of surplus government land. On paper, this seemed a masterstroke: bringing synergy to the highest levels of a leaner, cleaner, greener government; releasing huge swathes of vacant and derelict land at a profit to the taxpayer; reversing the decades-long decline in construction that precipitated the housing crisis; boosting local employment and skills; and raising the tax incomes of hard-pressed councils. What wasn’t there to like?
2015 is now. The National Audit Office (NAO) which ‘scrutinises public spending for parliament’, and whose vision ‘is to help the nation spend wisely’, recently reported on how the plan had worked out. Its investigation focused on four main issues:
