Recommendation 8

Since 2015–16, the Department has reduced the size of its built estate by just 2% (1,600 hectares). The Department also failed to meet two short-term targets set by Government in the 2015 Spending Review: to release land for 55,000 new homes by March 2020, and to raise £1 billion from the sale of land by March 2021. It raised £538 million and released land for just 9,200 houses, having never had any clear plans for how it would meet the 55,000 target. This failure is partly explained by changing military requirements for the estate after the targets were set, such as the decision of the United States to retain three large airfields —RAF Molesworth, RAF Mildenhall and RAF Alconbury—that the Department had planned to sell. The Department, however, did not seek to update its targets to reflect these changed circumstances.10