Land banking by Network Rail is "a national scandal"

[chris_in_salop]

I don't know if anyone has seen this on the Conservative Home website, by Harry Phibbs?

https://www.conservativehome.com/lo...d-banking-network-rail-owns-128000-acres.html

“Network Rail owns a significant amount of land – approximately 51,700 hectares (127,800 acres), which it uses to operate and develop Britain’s railway infrastructure; that’s 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges, tunnels and viaducts and the thousands of signals, level crossings and stations. We run 20 of the UK’s largest stations and own the land on which these and all of the other 2,500 stations in Britain sit on.

“All Network Rail land is classed as part of our operational estate. To release land for housing and development, we need to go through a consultation process to ensure that the land we are releasing is not required for future railway related, or other relevant stakeholder use.

“Network Rail has committed to releasing land for homes nationally to support the government’s housing goal of building 1.5 million homes between 2015 and 2022. We are committed to releasing land for around 12,000 homes by 2020.”

I'm assuming that the 28,000 acres figure includes all operational stations and trackbeds. Building houses on this land might be controversial.

 

[Domh245]

I would also posit that most of those 28000 acres are within close proximity of an operational line, something that people have a habit of complaining about...

 

[eastdyke]

I don't know if anyone has seen this on the Conservative Home website, by Harry Phibbs?
https://www.conservativehome.com/lo...d-banking-network-rail-owns-128000-acres.html
I'm assuming that the 28,000 acres figure includes all operational stations and trackbeds. Building houses on this land might be controversial.

It's 127,800 acres and the final sentence is:

Yet, as I will detail tomorrow, there are other branches of the public sector that are even worse…

 

[BananaRepublic]

Land Banking was given a very bad press in the run up to the 2017 General Election and was widely suggested to be a very bad thing by all main political parties.

If government departments and other state owned or controlled bodies are hanging on to surplus land, that has very little chance of being reused for operational purposes, personally I would expect them to attract similar criticism to the private sector.
In the case of NR, of course it will depend on what that surplus land consists of.
For example disused goods yards or depot sites that have very little likelihood of being needed again - versus - land adjacent to busy railway lines or stations that could possibly require extra space for expansion.
As always, sweeping generalisations do not inform useful debate.


b

 

[eastdyke]

Land Banking was given a very bad press in the run up to the 2017 General Election and was widely suggested to be a very bad thing by all main political parties.

If government departments and other state owned or controlled bodies are hanging on to surplus land, that has very little chance of being reused for operational purposes, personally I would expect them to attract similar criticism to the private sector.
In the case of NR, of course it will depend on what that surplus land consists of.
For example disused goods yards or depot sites that have very little likelihood of being needed again - versus - land adjacent to busy railway lines or stations that could possibly require extra space for expansion.
As always, sweeping generalisations do not inform useful debate.b

GA would give you a very great deal for the use of a suitably placed/sized disused goods yard right now! And that would have been in the 'very little likelihood of being needed again' category just 2 years ago (had it existed).
Hence the slow pace of land release .....
Anyway NR will be off the hook as the biggest offender in the author's next piece

 

[yorksrob]

Typical Tory balderdash.

If they were that worried about land banking, they'd do something about private speculators doing it.

 

[AlterEgo]

It’s not really land banking as nearly all of the land involved is stuff that’s been inherited over the years. It’s not speculating and squatting on land to accrue a financial gain.

 

[Mojo]

For example disused goods yards or depot sites that have very little likelihood of being needed again - versus - land adjacent to busy railway lines or stations that could possibly require extra space for expansion.

I would also suspect that a lot of disused goods yards are in locations however that would not be suitable for building houses on, because of access, lack of interest, contamination, noise, etc.

 

[yorksrob]

BR was certainly quite keen to sell off the most sellable bits in the 80's.

 

[pdeaves]

BR was certainly quite keen to sell off the most sellable bits in the 80's.

As was Railtrack in the 90s and Network Rail now. As well as the huge sell-off NR is about to do, there has been a steady stream of odd bits being sold.

 

[yorksrob]

As was Railtrack in the 90s and Network Rail now. As well as the huge sell-off NR is about to do, there has been a steady stream of odd bits being sold.

Indeed. The idea that the railway has thousands of acres of neatly packaged, desireable land to play with is ludicrous. Conservative Home needs to look a little closer to home.

 

[eastdyke]

I'm guessing that 'other branches of the public sector that are even worse ...' will be the MOD?
This is all part of softening up the public to gain acceptance for:
'We want to build on every square inch of 'brownfield' (much of it is far from brown) land released from the MOD regardless of where it is and impacts on neighbouring communities ..... '

 

[nlogax]

"A national scandal". Oh good, because we'd run dry of national scandals and I feared there'd be nothing left to fill the papers and news sites.

Getting utterly bored of such politically-driven hyperbole, in this case designed to sharpen Tory pitchforks. Not helped by opposition parties being unwilling or unfussed by the idea of contributing any useful facts to counter such blunderbuss-distributed BS.

 

[eastdyke]

'Mafeking relieved' (well NR in this case) - right on cue:
https://www.conservativehome.com/lo...he-ministry-of-defence-owns-553000-acres.html

In June, a land holdings report was published by the Ministry of Defence. It states that as of April 1st this year, the MOD owned 553,000 acres. That was only down by about one percent – 6,000 acres – on the previous years. That is bigger than the size of Surrey. .....

 

[DarloRich]

It is a brainless, stupid and unintelligent article that, willfully to my mind, misses the point to score cheap digs. The central theme is that this land should be sold, cheaply, to decent Tory chaps to help them rack up even higher profits. Poor effort.

 

[HSTEd]

'Mafeking relieved' (well NR in this case) - right on cue:
https://www.conservativehome.com/lo...he-ministry-of-defence-owns-553000-acres.html

Not sure how many people want to live on Cape Wrath though.

 

[eastdyke]

Not sure how many people want to live on Cape Wrath though.

Naah weak-kneed southerners, you soon get used to things that 'go bang in the night'

 

[OneOffDave]

I'm sure the old chemical weapons ranges will make great places to live

 

[ainsworth74]

'Mafeking relieved' (well NR in this case) - right on cue:
https://www.conservativehome.com/lo...he-ministry-of-defence-owns-553000-acres.html

Majority of that is going to be training grounds. Salisbury Plain alone is neigh on 100,000 acres (what a bizarre choice of measure by the by, could it possibly be because it makes the numbers sound bigger and scarier than saying 864 square miles which doesn't sound large at all). Otterburn is another 60,000 acres, Warcop another 24,000 and how about another 30,000 in Stanford. Those are all just British Army training sites. Someone else mentioned Cape Wrath (15,000 acres) but there's also Dartmoor (32,000 acres) which is used by all the Services not just the Army.

Presumably this individual feels that the Armed Forces should not have access to training facilities? After all between just six of them we're up to basically half of this "land bank" so if you're going to make serious inroads presumably your going to want to sell off chunks of these extravagant training sites?

 

[eastdyke]

Presumably this individual feels that the Armed Forces should not have access to training facilities? After all between just six of them we're up to basically half of this "land bank" so if you're going to make serious inroads presumably your going to want to sell off chunks of these extravagant training sites?

No this is just a gentle softening up process whereby the population acquires awareness and acceptance of development of the 'brownfield' sites that were once MOD property.
I'm thinking more former airfields (of which a number have already been, at least in part, developed).
Some are in very good places for some development.
But by no means all.

 

[HSTEd]

Majority of that is going to be training grounds. Salisbury Plain alone is neigh on 100,000 acres (what a bizarre choice of measure by the by, could it possibly be because it makes the numbers sound bigger and scarier than saying 864 square miles which doesn't sound large at all). Otterburn is another 60,000 acres, Warcop another 24,000 and how about another 30,000 in Stanford. Those are all just British Army training sites. Someone else mentioned Cape Wrath (15,000 acres) but there's also Dartmoor (32,000 acres) which is used by all the Services not just the Army.

Presumably this individual feels that the Armed Forces should not have access to training facilities? After all between just six of them we're up to basically half of this "land bank" so if you're going to make serious inroads presumably your going to want to sell off chunks of these extravagant training sites?

Well honestly I think the MoD has far too much training ground land.
Most of it was seized during WW2 and has never been returned - and since the MoD is not required to pay rent on it they have no incentive to actually take a hard look at their requirements

If we were going to design a training establishment that efficiently uses land, I think Salisbury plain would likely be jettisoned.

It's a terrible place for a training facility.

 

[OneOffDave]

Well honestly I think the MoD has far too much training ground land.
Most of it was seized during WW2 and has never been returned - and since the MoD is not required to pay rent on it they have no incentive to actually take a hard look at their requirements

If we were going to design a training establishment that efficiently uses land, I think Salisbury plain would likely be jettisoned.

It's a terrible place for a training facility.

What makes it terrible?

The other question is who would buy it? Significant chunks of the land come with the risk of assorted unexploded ordnance over it and/or contamination by other means. There are also large numbers of scheduled historic sites and SSSIs too.

There is a large area of land surrounding RMC Sandhurst that developers would be desperate to get their hands on but that would mean finding new locations for the rifle ranges and increased transport costs and times to move the officer cadets to other training locations.

To the north of that is a large area of land owned by the Crown Estates that leads all the way up to Windsor Great Park. Given it's in such a desirable area, all of this and the park should be sold off first as it's just standing idle

 

[HSTEd]

What makes it terrible?

It is in the middle of the country in a relatively productive area and has a substantial surrounding population.