THE Government is preparing to sell off £13bn of assets it holds from the forced nationalisation of The Northern Rock and the Bradford & Bingley.

And the taxpayers’ stake in Lloyds Banking Group is to be slashed after George Osborne pledged to sell a further £9bn of shares.

This year’s planned sale will add to the £8.5bn recovered since £20bn was pumped into Lloyds during the financial crisis.

At yesterday’s share price, the £9bn sale will reduce the Treasury’s stake in Lloyds from 23 per cent to about seven per cent.

But his Budget speech contained no reference to Royal Bank of Scotland, which is still 80 per cent owned by the taxpayer.

The task of selling the Lloyds shares has been made easier in recent weeks by the bank’s recent decision to pay a dividend to its threem shareholders for the first time since its taxpayer rescue.

The dividend, which raised at least £100m for the Government, was announced alongside a four-fold rise in annual profits to £1.8bn.

The amount recovered since the 2010 formation of UK Asset Resolution (UKAR) - the state-owned firm responsible for winding down the mortgage books of Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley - stood at £12bn in October.

UKAR said that a strategic review of options to accelerate repayment of the government loans found positive investor interest in the assets of both Bradford & Bingley and Northern Rock, as well as in the mortgage servicing capabilities of UKAR.

As a result, UKAR said it would now seek expressions of interest and also explore potential options for the divestment of the mortgage servicing activities which were provided by B&B.