§ Lord Hyltonasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether health authorities will be entitled to retain all receipts from sales of houses or flats and to use them at their discretion to finance capital programmes.
§ Baroness TrumpingtonOur general policy on the retention of the proceeds from the sale of surplus property will apply to our recently announced exercise on houses and flats. This is based on the principle that the District Health Authority disposing of the property should retain the proceeds. There are exceptions to this, e.g., where a sale takes place only as a result of a replacement provided from Regional Health Authority funds, in which case that authority receives the sale proceeds, but in all cases proceeds are retained for use within the National Health Service. As some of the existing stock of residential accommodation is in a poor state of repair and decoration, we have asked health authorities to regard bringing the retained stock of accommodation up to a reasonable standard as a priority charge on the proceeds of sales of residential accommodation.