According to a recent survey of municipal councils, English councils are preparing to sell community centers, athletic facilities, and shopping arcades as they rely on a rapid disposal of properties to balance the books.
Growing Fiscal Challenges Prompt Asset Sales
The Key Cities Group for major urban areas in England stated that 60% of local authorities are planning to dispose of properties to cover the escalating costs of adult and children’s social care.
Councils have previously faced criticism for disposing of public land and land to shore up their finances, but they contend they must continue to generate essential revenue from asset sales or face insolvency.
The group noted that a high proportion of councils seeking to raise money from a fire sale of assets represented “a distinct shift from 2024, when the largest share (60%) of municipal officials said they would focus on restructuring services and using savings to manage growing fiscal pressures.”
Specific Cases of Proposed Disposals
Medway Council in Kent announced its property management strategy featured the sale of a retail complex in a local town and a social club in another town to raise £20m over the next half-decade.
- A local golf course and commercial properties owned in Worcestershire and Suffolk, which all provide rental income for the authority, will also be disposed of under the strategy.
Local Levy Increases and Wider Financial Pressures
The survey of local authorities in the coalition, which covers Sunderland, Southampton, Gloucester and Salford, also found that more than 70% of authorities will need to raise council taxes next April to cover the rising cost of essential services, increased rates of housing insecurity, and a longstanding housing shortage.
The authority said it will proceed with property disposals after steep rises in the cost of youth support, special educational needs and disability (Send) provision, elderly and disability services, and short-term housing.
“We are adopting creative strategies but certain measures take time to deliver both improved services and cost efficiency,” stated a council leader.
He added: “There are population challenges which will continue to add to the pressures we have. As a unitary authority, we had a drastic reduction in our revenue support grant from over the past decade, which is very challenging.”
National Trends and Projections
A survey of regional authorities this week also found local finances being stretched by the growing number of young people and older individuals requiring Send support.
A network of councils said that council deficits will hit 4.4 billion pounds a year by 2029, as they struggle to cope with rising needs.
Ministers have put off scheduled changes to the Send system until next year after a white paper setting out those reforms was recently delayed.
Deprivation and Funding Gaps
According to the latest deprivation measures (the Index of Multiple Deprivation) for English councils, many key cities members were among the most disadvantaged in England.
- “Participating urban centers like several major towns place in the top 30 nationally under the 2025 IMD measures,” noted the study.
“While only one key city is in the ten most deprived for deprived neighbourhoods countrywide, cities are far more likely to be in the worst-off 20% of England. The data highlights the scale of difficulties facing local leaders across key cities in the next twelve months,” the report added.
“Council officials have been clear about the need for a fair and sustainable funding system that reflects and responds to the actual extent of disadvantage and demand,” said a council leader.
“Lacking this, councils will persist to face impossible choices around which essential services to allocate spend to, and which to reduce, to the disadvantage of their residents.”
A fifth of councils have reduced or weakened social care provision in the last year, the survey found.
