Regardless of selling enough for more than 100,000 properties, Whitehall in the City of Westminster London only has proof for the construction of 200 new houses on public land sold off during the past five years.
Last year, the National Audit Office found that the government departments sold off sufficient land to build 109,500 homes between 2011 and 2015. However, according to NAO, the communities' department officials did not collect any records on how many houses were subsequently built, as reported by Financial Times.
According to evidence they provided to a committee of MPs on Monday, Jan. 25, the civil servants have shown research on 100 of the 942 sites which were sold off and found that 200 homes had been built, in response to the NAO's report.
Sampling shows that the work has begun on additional 2,400 homes, with 2,100 having received planning permission and 4,300 awaiting planning permission. What happened to the other 842 sites which have been sold is still unknown. However, extrapolating this to the whole program proposes that about 1,800 houses have been built in total.
According to Huffington Post, the statistics were delivered few weeks after David Cameron promised to build hundreds of thousands of houses annually, as he wants to make housing his premiership's key legacy.
Downing Street in London asserted that despite the figures, it was determined to provide a million new houses and flats by 2020. However, Shadow Communities Secretary John Healey said: "As usual on housing, the Prime Minister has promised big but delivered little." "The Government is failing to get good value for taxpayers' money, and failing millions of people who desperately need an affordable home to rent or buy," he added.
According to the senior civil servants, it would be up to ministers to demand more monitoring of the results of public land sales, despite warnings from the National Audit Office for better record-keeping.
