AQW 19662/22-27

Ms Kellie Armstrong
Alliance Party
Strangford

Tabled Date: 10/12/2024
Answered On Date: 16/12/2024
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister of Finance to detail the actions she will be delivering in the year ahead to meet the requirements relating to data sharing, particularly public land availability, as part of the Executive's agreed Housing Supply Strategy.

Answer:

Land & Property Services (LPS), within my department, has been developing a centrally held database - The Government Land and Property Register (GLPR) – to record all government owned and/or occupied land and property assets in Northern Ireland.

As of March 2024, 119,756 Hectares of assets has been identified and mapped as part of the ongoing GLPR project. This work is scheduled to continue into 2025.

The data within the GLPR is freely available to all government departments and can be used by departments to assist in identifying public land availability, as part of the Executive's agreed Housing Supply Strategy.

Also, within LPS, Ordnance Survey (OSNI) is supporting the Housing Led Regeneration Subgroup and the Rural Housing Steering Group by providing geospatial information on publicly owned land and property for further analysis by the groups to ascertain suitability for housing development. Both OSNI and the GLPR team are represented on these groups. There is work ongoing, by OSNI, to develop an internal application (online map viewer) where Departments can better access and view information on publicly owned land.