Housing Minister Grant Shapps has announced plans to give members of the public the right to reclaim and develop hundreds of acres of unused public sector land and buildings, which are currently trapped in a bureaucratic quagmire.

The new Community Right to Reclaim Land will help communities to improve their local area by using disused publicly owned land for new development.

There is currently a large amount of public sector land that could be developed for new homes, businesses and leisure facilities. The amount of previously developed land owned by public bodies is more than twice the size of Leicester - but a complicated and ineffective system makes it difficult to find out where the land is and who owns it, and even harder to request to use it.

By the summer, a new one-stop shop will provide citizens with information about empty land and buildings they can develop to improve their local area. The new online tool will combine information from existing databases to form the bedrock of a new Community Right - the Right to Reclaim Land - which will also include an improved system for members of the public to request that empty public sector land or buildings are sold off, so they can be brought back into use.

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The current system for requesting the sale of public land and buildings is so obscure and restrictive that it is rarely used, with only one successful application in the past 13 years.

In the future, members of public will be able to access information about land owned by a much broader range of public bodies, and the system for considering requests will be streamlined, with all but the most sensitive decisions considered alongside other planning casework, instead of Government Ministers.

As part of the move, Mr Shapps is also calling on Government departments to make more information about their surplus land available. To kick-start this drive towards greater transparency, and set an example for what the public sector can do, the Minister is publishing, for the first time, a detailed list of all the land and property assets owned by the national housing and regeneration agency, so communities can see where land and property is located, and its status.

Mr Shapps said: "It's completely unacceptable that people have to walk past derelict land and buildings every day, in the knowledge that there's almost no prospect they will be brought back into use, and there's absolutely nothing they can do about it. For years, communities who have attempted to improve their local area by developing disused public land and buildings have found themselves bouncing off the walls of bureaucratic indifference - their attempts to do something positive for their community thwarted by a system that has proved totally ineffective.

"We are introducing a new Right to Reclaim Land. Under our plans, communities will no longer be kept in the dark about what land is available; instead they will be able to see at the click of a button what local opportunities there are for development. And rather than requests to use that land being blocked and ignored, ordinary people who make a case to improve their local area will be listened to.

"But this is only the start - we are no longer prepared to accept the state-sponsored decline of local communities. I am determined that this system works, so I want to hear any suggestions for improvements, and if necessary I will use legislation to make sure it is local communities who reap the rewards of opportunities to develop local land and buildings that currently lie unused."

(CD)