§ Mr. GowTo ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many houses and flats owned by his Department are surplus to requirement; in how many cases the Property Services Agency has been instructed to sell such properties; and how many properties remain unsold(a) more than four months, (b) more than eight months and (c) more than 12 months after the Property Services Agency was instructed to sell them.
§ Mr. FreemanAt 30 November 1987, the most recent date for which statistics are available, a total of 2,397 houses and flats had been declared surplus to MOD's requirements and were still owned by the Ministry of Defence. Of these, PSA had been instructed to sell 844 and a further 384 were in the process of sale through the discounted sales scheme which offers houses (but not flats) to servicemen at a discount of 30 per cent. The remaining 1,169 properties were still being processed by the PL(Lands) division at the Ministry of Defence as part of the normal process prior to sale. Each year PL(Lands) processes about 2,000 properties.
I regret that the information required to identify the number of the properties remaining unsold after four, eight and 12 months is not available to the PSA and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.