Tri-Service

Valuable MOD Estate Faces Cutbacks

The Ministry of Defence is being instructed to draw up plans to sell off significant portions of its land and real estate assets.

The National Audit Office explain:

"The defence estate is larger than needed, under-utilised, too expensive to maintain and fails to support the Department’s longer-term strategy for the Armed Forces."

They go on to highlight that "the defence estate is unsustainable at its current size and condition."

Below we detail the larger individual areas of the MoD's Estate, a portfolio of just under 100,000 hectares:

A military presence, in the form of Roman legions, existed in the Otterburn area as long ago as the first

and second centuries AD. In 1911, the War Office bought 7,690 hectares of land here and the artillery

ranges were extended during the Second World War.

Military training has taken place on Dartmoor since the early 1800s

The training area now consists of some 22,900 hectares of land, which is all owned by the MOD, and is the largest single-impact area range in the UK.

Today, the MOD uses approximately 12,760 hectares of the National Park's 94,400 hectares. The Dartmoor

Training Area is used for light forces exercises, mostly for Royal Marines and other units based in the

southwest.

The Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire is 25 miles by 10 miles (40km by 16km) and occupies about one ninth of

the area of Wiltshire.

Much of the land is let to farmers or is grazed under license. Approximately 12,150 hectares of the land is used for live firing and as impact areas. In certain areas, public access is permanently restricted for safety reasons.

Catterick and Feldom Training Area in Yorkshire has a historic connection to the military as far back as 1798.

Lord Baden-Powell was tasked by the War Office to establish a military training centre in the north of England - he chose Catterick.

RAF Spadeadam, Cumbria

Located on the edge of the Wark Forest between Hadrian’s Wall and the Scottish Borders, the site now

occupied by the RAF used to be known as the Spadeadam Wastes.

Multi Billion Pound MoD Estate Faces The Axe

Sennybridge Training Area is the third-largest training area in the UK. It's a major Field Firing

Area which was requisitioned in 1939, and taken over as a Royal Artillery Practice Camp in 1940.

The government has disposed of enough land with capacity for an estimated 109,590 homes at the end of March 2015. The biggest contributors to the target are: Ministry of Defence (38,778 homes, 35%); HCA (20,930 homes, 19%); and Department of Health (15,185 homes, 14%). In total, the land disposed comprises 942 sites.