According to a latest survey of local authorities, English councils are preparing to sell community centers, sports centres, and retail spaces as they bet on a rapid disposal of assets to balance the books.
Growing Financial Pressures Prompt Asset Sales
The Key Cities Group representing major urban areas in the UK reported that 60% of councils are planning to dispose of properties to meet the escalating costs of social services for vulnerable individuals.
Councils have in the past come under fire for selling public land and open spaces to shore up their budgets, but they argue they must proceed to raise vital cash from property disposals or declare themselves bankrupt.
This coalition said that a significant number of authorities seeking to raise money from a fire sale of assets marked “a distinct shift from 2024, when the largest share (six in ten) of municipal officials said they would focus on restructuring services and utilising savings to weather increasing fiscal pressures.”
Detailed Examples of Proposed Sales
Medway Council in southeast England announced its property management strategy featured the disposal of a shopping centre in Rainham and a social club in another town to generate £20m over the next half-decade.
- Gillingham golf club and business parks owned in Worcestershire and Suffolk, which all generate rent for Medway council, will additionally be disposed of under the strategy.
Local Levy Rises and Wider Financial Strains
The survey of local authorities in the key cities group, which covers Sunderland, Southampton, Gloucester and Salford, also found that over seven in ten of councils will have to raise council taxes next April to address the growing cost of essential services, higher levels of homelessness, and a longstanding housing shortage.
The authority explained it will press ahead with property disposals after steep rises in the cost of children services, special educational needs and disability (Send) provision, adult social care, and temporary accommodation.
“We are adopting creative strategies but some of these require time to achieve both improved services and financial savings,” said Vince Maple.
He continued: “We face population challenges which will continue to increase the strains we have. As a local government body, we had a 91% cut in our central funding from 2010-24, which is extremely difficult.”
National Patterns and Projections
A survey of county councils this week also found council budgets being strained by the increasing figures of young people and adults needing Send support.
The County Councils Network said that council deficits will hit £4.4bn a year by the end of the decade, as they grapple to cope with rising needs.
Ministers have put off planned reforms to the Send system until next year after a policy document setting out those changes was recently delayed.
Deprivation and Financial Shortfalls
Based on the most recent deprivation measures (the Index of Multiple Deprivation) for English councils, many participating urban areas were among the most deprived in the country.
- “Participating urban centers like Hull, Bradford, Stoke-on-Trent, Sunderland and Wolverhampton place in the most deprived 30 nationally under the 2025 deprivation indices,” noted the report.
“Although only a single urban area is among the ten most deprived for deprived neighbourhoods countrywide, cities are much more prone to be in the worst-off 20% of England. The data highlights the scale of challenges facing local leaders across major urban centers in the coming year,” the analysis concluded.
“Local government leaders have been explicit about the need for a fair and sustainable financial structure that accounts for and addresses the actual extent of disadvantage and need,” stated Michael Mordey.
“Lacking this, local authorities will persist to face difficult decisions around which essential services to allocate spend to, and which to reduce, to the disadvantage of their communities.”
A fifth of local authorities have reduced or weakened care services in the last year, the study revealed.
