Taxpayers 'miss out on £140m windfall' from Crown Estate land sale
Sale of historic estate now up for redevelopment lacked clause which would have entitled taxpayer to money if value increased
Taxpayers face missing out on £140 million in windfall revenue from a Crown Estate land sale.
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The 1,100-acre Orchard Portman Estate in Somerset was sold to housing developer Taylor Wimpey for £12.5 million in 2018.
Located near Taunton, the plot of land dates back to the 15th century and consists mainly of undeveloped farmland.
The developer is looking to transform the site into 7,000 new homes for 15,000 residents, which could raise the value of the land by £560 million.
But the land sale deal did not include a clause which would have entitled the Crown Estate to extra money should the value of the land increase as a result of redevelopment.
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Campaigners believe that this means taxpayers have lost out on about £140 million which they would have been entitled to had the provision - known as an uplift clause - been inserted into the deal at a rate of 25 per cent.
The Crown Estate is an independent business which manages land all over the country and shares its profits between the taxpayer and the monarch via the sovereign grant.
Plans for the Taunton Garden Village development have not yet been submitted, and were obtained by campaign group Save Blackdown Vale via a Freedom of Information request.
Rob Hossell, a member of the campaign group, told The Times: "We thought this was very unusual at the time, particularly after speaking to a number of planning professionals, none of whom could recall a comparable sale of land without an uplift/overage clause."
Campaigner Colin Fisher added that the deal “exposes all sorts of flaws in the governance of the Crown Estate” and said the development would alter the character of the area.
Gideon Amos, the MP for Taunton and Wellington, has written to the public accounts committee calling on it to investigate the sale - a request he also made at the time of the sale.
He said the "chickens are coming home to roost with the development" and warned it risked overwhelming "the balanced development we would all want to see in our county".
The sale was previously subject to an internal review and independent examination by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) which uncovered no evidence of wrongdoing and found that the land was sold through a competitive market process.
The Crown Estate said: “The land was sold through a competitive market process and achieved a sale price that exceeded both expectations and book value at the time.”
Taylor Wimpey said: “Taylor Wimpey strongly refutes any allegations of wrongdoing in relation to the land acquisition; it was a competitive, open-market sales process. An independent Rics investigation concluded in 2021 and found no material or actionable failings.”