TAXPAYERS may have been short-changed by Tory ministers who showed “alarming complacency” over sales of public land, an investigation by MPs has revealed.

In a feeble bid to get to get to grips with Britain’s housing crisis, the government has been flogging land to private developers, promising 100,000 new homes would be built on the sites.

But a report has found they have no idea of how the land has been used.

Not even “basic” information about how many homes built or whether land was sold at market value has been collected, according to the public accounts committee (PAC).

Promises made about the number of jobs the land sales would create are also unsubstantiated.

The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) boasted it would support as many as 25,000 jobs, but has no figures to prove this.

Labour shadow housing minister John Healey (pictured) branded the findings “damning.”

He said: “It reveals ministers have been extraordinarily negligent in the way they deal with and dispose of public land.
“Ministers would do well to remember they are stewards of this land on behalf of the public.

“It is taxpayers who are sold short when ministers sell public assets for less than they are worth. And we all pay the price when we build fewer homes than the country needs.

“After five years of failure on housing, it’s time the government got a grip.”

Despite the embarrassing report, the DCLG said yesterday it wanted to go “further and faster” by selling enough land for another 15,000 homes by 2020.

“We have got the country building again and are releasing surplus government land to protect taxpayers from paying for their upkeep and build the homes families need,” a spokesman said.

PAC chairwoman Meg Hillier said the government should be “embarrassed” by the report and “learn from its mistakes”

“It is an insult to taxpayers that the potential economic benefits arising from the sale of public land should be put at risk by such short-sighted government mismanagement,” she said.