Building a movement through partnership

One Public Estate sits in the centre of local and central government and this is a key factor in developing honest brokerage across the public sector.

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The country’s need for new housing – in the right places and at the right price – has become greater as the housing crisis has continued. OPE therefore puts a special emphasis on freeing-up land for house building, alongside other objectives of better services and efficiencies. 

A particularly fruitful new development is the partnership between OPE and the MHCLG to jointly administer its Land Release Fund. In February 2018, the fund awarded £45 million to help councils overcome barriers (such as the need for site remediation) that would otherwise make land unusable for development, thereby helping them to meet their ambition to unlock land with capacity for at least 160,000 homes by 2020. 

In forging strong bonds between OPE and MHCLG to deliver the Land Release Fund, we are helping to provide OPE partnerships with revenue and capital to accelerate and expand the release of land for housing. We expect to be working much more closely with MHCLG and Homes England to help them deliver their aims of a million new homes by 2020, and releasing land for 160,000 homes on government land and a further 160,000 on local government land by 2020.