David secret plan to cut Uks £149bn debt by selling property

[TrueBlueTerrier]

David Cameron's secret plan to cut UK's £149bn debt by selling off property

The Government is working on a secret plan to tackle Britain's £149bn deficit by hiving off state-owned property assets worth tens of billions of pounds and selling them to the private sector.

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Prime Minister David Cameron is understood to have written to all ministers demanding they produce an inventory of the property in their spending departments, including lengths of leases and occupants.

The Office for National Statistics estimates that government property is worth about £370bn. However, there is no comprehensive register of the entire portfolio and some City experts believe the estate could be worth £500bn.

The Shareholder Executive, the body responsible for realising value from state-owned assets, has been tasked with co-ordinating the government-wide attempt to maximise returns from its property portfolio.

Its work is being led by John McCready, the Ernst & Young senior partner hired last December to head a new property unit at the Executive.

The Government's property plan, which is at a relatively early stage, coincides with a crackdown on Whitehall waste being spearheaded by Bhs-owner Sir Philip Green.

The retail entrepreneur will on Monday publish his report into how civil servants have wasted hundreds of millions of pounds through such things as renting empty offices and allowing each police force to source its own uniforms.

The previous government commissioned Labour peer Lord Carter of Coles to report on the value locked up in state-owned property.

He found it could expect to make about £20bn from disposals over the next 10 years and a further £5bn in annual savings by the end of the period.

However, Mr Cameron has brought fresh urgency to the project and expanded it beyond assets already managed by the Executive – including Royal Mail, the Met Office and the British Waterways Authority – to include all government property.

One source familiar with the project said: "The idea is that responsibility should be centralised in one place but there is still a huge amount of work to do. It's being taken very seriously but it's not easy."

It is thought that the initial aim is to bring together similar sorts of properties spanning all departments that could be packaged up and eventually sold. That includes potentially floating portfolios on the stock market as real estate investment trusts (REITs) – a way of investing in property that cuts or eliminates corporate taxes.

One senior City source said flotations would allow the Government to sell assets at a lower headline price because the UK taxpayer would be a potential beneficiary.

However, he added: "The downside of a flotation is that you may have the moral high ground to sell cheap but you then end up with 30m shareholders and an unworkable register."

Insiders say the Government's biggest challenge is creating what would be the first realistic inventory of what it owns.

"The real issue is that the Government do not know what they have," said a source. "In the Department of Health alone there are 77,000 buildings – but this inventory was completed only recently and no one know what the numbers are elsewhere."

[Straight4ward]

So just how much exactly are they asking for 10 Downing Street?

[fishtank]

So just how much exactly are they asking for 10 Downing Street?

Never mind 10 Downing st...how about the PMs taxpayer sponsored weekend retreat..... Chequers.

[noggin1969]

H

[mdm]

Great state Liebour have left this country in! Well done, pr**s.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Great state Liebour have left this country in! Well done, pr**s.

IMHO it will look like labour left the Promised Land for the ConDems, and in 5 years it'll be the scorched earth for whoever takes over.

[DGP1]

Great state Liebour have left this country in! Well done, pr**s.

IMHO it will look like labour left the Promised Land for the ConDems, and in 5 years it'll be the scorched earth for whoever takes over.

Labour, Conservative, Lib Dems or any of those other useless feckers just do what they what to and screw everyone else (both actual and metaphorically), IMHO anyone who is or who wants to be a politician should be taken out and made to jump off Blackpool tower and if they survive then they can stand of election.


Back to the main story, that's just the Tory's selling off what's left of the countries assets to their friends to make money from. I've a radical plan but, get the banks to pay back all the billions that was pumped into them and that would greatly ease the national debt.