§ Sir Timothy Kitsonasked the Secretary of State for Defence what progress has been made with the sale and letting of Service properties in the Catterick area; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. GoodhartIn January of this year it was anticipated that over 600 married quarters at Catterick garrison would become surplus to requirements and be passed to the Property Services Agency for disposal. These included 370 timber-clad married quarters of a type known as 5M. Because of the large numbers involved and the unlikelihood of the PSA being able to sell them quickly, I agreed to discuss with the local authority the possibility of making a number available to it for a short period. It is now possible, as a result of changes in the defence programme announced in Cmnd. 8288, that we shall have a requirement for most, if not all of the quarters at Catterick, excluding those of the 5M type in which the council is not interested. Since this requirement is not likely to materialise before 1985 I am still prepared to lease a number of the vacant quarters to the local authority and I understand the PSA, acting on behalf of the Ministry of Defence, has already identified with Richmondshire district council the quarters concerned. As I said in my statement on 29 January—[Vol. 997, c.513–4]—the houses can be made available only for a short period, and a condition of any agreement will be that the local authority must vacate the houses when the period granted by the agreement expires.