The MOD is one of the largest landowners in the United Kingdom and currently spends over £1bn per annum on its estate. The defence estate comprises some 240,000 hectares (ha) in the UK with over 4,000 sites. Sites can be broadly described as "built" (barracks, naval bases, depots, aircraft hangars, etc.) or "rural". The built estate, covers around 80,000 ha, including more than 45,000 buildings (excluding housing), and it is on this that most expenditure is concentrated.
The remaining 160,000 hectares is relatively undeveloped rural land, which includes 21 major armed forces training areas and 39 minor training areas. The department also uses significant estate overseas, for instance, in Germany, Cyprus, the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar, with major training facilities in Canada, Cyprus, Germany, Norway, Poland and Kenya. As well as military facilities, the defence estate contains 289 Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs), 48 special protection areas, over 650 statutorily protected buildings, almost 1300 scheduled monuments, and thousands of other archaeological sites.
The Ministry of Defence is one of the largest landowners in the country. In total, it occupies an estate equivalent to about 1% of the UK landmass. This land is vital if our Armed Forces are to carry out their responsibilities to the high standards, which we expect from them.
There is increasing pressure for land for residential development, economic regeneration and recreation. The MOD must be able to justify the need for every piece of land it holds and to demonstrate that it is properly managed.
The MOD also needs to balance the requirement of retaining this land for the use of our Armed Forces against its responsibility for the conservation of the land, ensuring its heritage is safeguarded and enabling access for recreation wherever possible.
The organisation charged with carrying out this task is Defence Estates.
