The timing of this fire sale is unfortunate for BW, which already has a Treasury team undertaking a review of the model for managing its waterside property portfolio as part of a wider investigation of public sector savings and efficiencies. That team is led by Gerry Grimstone, the former Treasury mandarin now in charge of the public asset sell off.

The review will assess how best public value might be delivered from BW’s non-operational property estate in the medium term. BW says it’s working closely with the team to demonstrate how its waterside property delivers value to the nation. That's likely to be far greater than the now-outdated £500m pre-slump pricetag.

A spokesman for BW told BB: ‘In the last five years £130m of revenue profits from property has been invested in the historic waterway network. In each of those five years British Waterways consistently out-performed the Investment Property Databank – the most widely accepted benchmark for performance in the property industry.’

BW’s property and other commercial activities have made a massive contribution to the funding of the waterway network in the last few years and brought in investment that has transformed areas and communities living by our waterside that simply would not otherwise have materialised, he added.

The sale of its property portfolio is something BW will not welcome. ‘Our property estate is used as a dowry to bring investment into the network and we have proven ourselves adept at this,’ BW’s spokesman told us.

Other state-owned bodies that are going for a song include the Royal Mint, the Tote, the Ordnance Survey and the Met Office. And, in more government-speak, BB understands bidders are sought to help the government to realise its ‘long term objective of disengagement’ for the Covent Garden Market Authority.