Ronald, There are likely to be others on this list that know more about this than I do…
Has the UK government been so hard up for cash in recent years that it has taken to selling off any spare /16 blocks that it happens to have lying around? If so, who should I talk to about placing a bid for the next one they decide to unload?
That might not have been the motivation, but the result is the same, yes. The “Department for Work and Pensions” held 51/8, which was heavily used internally and on the Public Services Network, but not routed on the Internet. Every so often, a tech news article would pop up complaining about all this “unused” space lying around, or someone would send in a Freedom of Information request demanding to know what the government was doing with it(*). Around 2015, I presume that they decided it was less bother to start selling off the space than it was to cope with the comments, so that’s what they did — Microsoft and Sky bought some, other bits went elsewhere… Cheers, Rob (*) One such response from 2014 is here: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/214257/response/529770/attach/html/3/...