The Ministry of Defence has outlined a 25-year plan to streamline its massive defence estate and reduce it in size by 30% by 2040.
The Government has committed to reducing the estate in size by 30% by 2040 and has identified 91 sites across the UK it intends to dispose of, ranging from the historic Fort George in Scotland to the Woolwich barracks in London.
The Ministry of Defence says its estate, which covers 1.8% of the UK land mass, is inefficient, expensive to maintain and incompatible with the needs of the modern armed forces. It says the future estate will be smaller and clustered around areas of specialisation.
The Government says an additional £4bn will be need to be spent on the remainder of the estate over the next decade. So far it has committed £1bn. Closing these sites also releases land for up to 55,000 new homes as part of the Government’s wider target of releasing land for up to 160,000 new homes by 2020.
However, analysis by the National Audit Office (NAO) suggests that implementing the plan will ‘extremely challenging’ and there is a ‘significant risk’ that that the poor condition of the estate will affect defence capabilities.
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