§ Mr. WebbTo ask the Secretary of State for Defence for how many empty houses his Department is responsible; and if he will make a statement. [179354]
§ Mr. Caplin[holding answer 18 June 2004]: Defence Estates (the Ministry of Defence Agency responsible) is aware of 7,700 empty properties in mainland UK, as at 31 March 2004. Of those:
over 900 are planned for disposalover 1,600 are held for future Service deploymentssome 550 are empty awaiting modernisationThe remainder are available to let or are under offer to Service families. There may be a relatively small number of additional properties which are empty, for which information is not held centrally.