The next prime minister and chancellor of the exchequer will inherit a familiar British problem: large ambitions, tight fiscal rules, low growth, overstretched public services and little appetite for higher taxes.
If ‘Manchesterism’ is to become a serious governing programme rather than a political mood, it must answer a practical question. How can the state take more responsibility for housing, transport, water, energy and local growth without simply adding more pressure to the public balance sheet?
The answer should not begin with nationalisation. It should begin with stewardship. The call for greater public control speaks to a real frustration. Britain’s essential systems are too expensive, fragmented and underinvested. But the state does not need to start by taking back control of more assets. It already owns or controls more public land, buildings and commercial assets than it can properly see, value or manage.
The first task is to make existing public assets visible, govern them professionally, generate recurring revenue and strengthen local and national balance sheets.
The problem in plain sight
Britain has spent decades promising to move power out of Whitehall. But devolution without an asset base risks becoming responsibility without agency. Cities need more than programme funding and permission to bid into central pots. They need visibility and professional stewardship over the public urban portfolios already sitting in their midst.
Britain’s land debate is still too primitive. The question is usually framed as whether public land should be released, sold, protected, nationalised or devolved. The more basic problem is that the public sector often cannot see its own urban real estate as a portfolio.
Central government, councils, transport bodies, NHS trusts, housing authorities, universities, utilities and public corporations all hold land and buildings. Yet the state struggles to answer basic questions: where are these assets, who controls them, what are they worth, what constraints apply and what could they become if managed together rather than in silos?
This is not only a housing problem. It is a fiscal problem.
The UK’s fiscal framework still gives too little weight to the asset side of the public balance sheet, where budgets, fiscal rules and financial statements remain poorly connected. Debt, deficits and long-term obligations dominate the debate, while public land, property and commercial assets are often invisible, undervalued or treated as administrative overhead.
That creates a bias towards short-term restraint and disposals, and away from building a stronger balance sheet. It also means the state can look weaker than it really is. A government that wants to reassure markets, devolve power and invest in growth should be able to show not only what it owes, but what it owns and how it governs those assets.
UK asset map
The starting point should be creating asset maps. An asset map is not a formal asset register which states exactly what a public body owns. Rather, it is a survey which looks across public assets within a real economic geography – a city, city-region or transport corridor. It identifies who controls the assets, how they are used, what they may be worth, what constraints apply and what better-use options may exist.
This is not an accounting reform, audited valuation, privatisation programme or asset-sale exercise. It is a rapid, indicative portfolio-visibility exercise. Its purpose is to give ministers, mayors, HM Treasury, investors and citizens an order-of-magnitude view before decisions are made about housing, infrastructure, public net worth or fiscal strategy.
Public assets often become valuable only when seen together. A station car park, depot, hospital site, council estate, utility corridor or school landholding may look marginal in isolation. Across a city, these holdings can form the spatial base for housing, regeneration, transport investment and recurring public revenue.
London is the largest opportunity. Transport for London, Network Rail, boroughs, the NHS, housing bodies and other public entities control strategic urban real estate around stations, depots, hospitals, interchanges and transport corridors. Some assets are visible. Many are not visible in a way that allows government to understand fair market value, opportunity cost or development potential across the portfolio.
Birmingham faces fiscal distress, housing need and investment pressure, while controlling a large land and property base. Yet public debate still focuses too much on cuts, tax, emergency support or disposals, and too little on whether the city’s public estate could be mapped, valued and governed as a portfolio.
The UK has a particular advantage. HM Land Registry data, Ordnance Survey mapping, planning records, local authority accounts, central government estate data, Companies House records and commercial property-intelligence platforms provide a strong starting point. What takes months or years in weaker-data jurisdictions can often begin much faster in the UK.
But the work still needs a protocol. Public assets can be tax-exempt, incompletely recorded, held through subsidiaries, trusts, agencies or public corporations, or controlled operationally by one body while legally owned by another. Short leaseholds, statutory holdings and legacy ownership structures can all obscure the picture.
The practical resolution
The UK should launch a 90-day asset map pilot. The output should be simple: a map and table showing owner, ultimate public controller, location, current use, book value where available, indicative economic value range, planning constraints, confidence rating and possible portfolio grouping.
The first phase should be desktop-led, using existing public records, geospatial tools and commercial property platforms to build an initial picture. The second should engage public owners to confirm title, control, use, constraints, liabilities and operational requirements. Government should begin with an independent portfolio view rather than rely entirely on fragmented asset-holding bodies to volunteer information.
An asset map should make fire sales less likely by showing where public value may be destroyed by short-term disposals. The goal is to distinguish assets that must remain operational from assets that could support housing, infrastructure, recurring revenue or stronger public net worth.
What has been missing is not data alone. It is political will, institutional imagination and a common protocol.
The first instruction to a new prime minister and chancellor should be simple: before Britain nationalises more assets, sells more public land, creates more funds or promises more local control, first see what the state already owns.
Britain already has more public wealth than it knows how to manage. The practical revolution should start there.
Dag Detter is Principal of Detter & Co. and John Crompton is an investment banker and former HM Treasury official and adviser.
This is an edited version of the UK asset map protocol.
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