According to a recent poll of local authorities, English councils are preparing to sell community centers, sports centres, and retail spaces as they bet on a fire sale of assets to balance the books.
Growing Fiscal Challenges Prompt Asset Sales
A coalition of councils for second-tier cities in the UK reported that 60% of councils are intending to sell assets to meet the rising costs of social services for vulnerable individuals.
Councils have in the past come under fire for selling public land and open spaces to support their budgets, but they contend they must proceed to generate essential revenue from property disposals or declare themselves bankrupt.
This coalition noted that a significant number of councils seeking to raise money from a fire sale of holdings marked “a distinct shift from 2024, when the majority (60%) of local leaders stated they would focus on service redesigns and utilising savings to weather increasing financial challenges.”
Specific Examples of Planned Sales
One local authority in southeast England announced its property management strategy featured the disposal of a retail complex in a local town and a community venue in another town to generate £20m over five years.
- A local golf course and commercial properties owned in Worcestershire and Suffolk, which all generate rent for the authority, will also be sold under the strategy.
Local Levy Rises and Broader Fiscal Pressures
This research of local authorities in the coalition, which includes Sunderland, Southampton, Gloucester and Salford, further found that over seven in ten of councils will need to increase local levies next spring to address the growing cost of core provisions, increased rates of housing insecurity, and a longstanding housing shortage.
The authority said it will press ahead with property disposals after sharp increases in the cost of children services, special educational needs and disability (Send) provision, adult social care, and short-term housing.
“We are adopting creative strategies but certain measures require time to deliver both better provisions and financial savings,” said Vince Maple.
He added: “We face population challenges which will continue to add to the pressures we have. As a local government body, we had a drastic reduction in our revenue support grant from over the past decade, which is very challenging.”
Countrywide Trends and Projections
Research of county councils this week also found local finances being strained by the increasing figures of young people and older individuals requiring special educational assistance.
The County Councils Network said that local shortfalls will reach £4.4bn a year by the end of the decade, as they struggle to cope with rising needs.
Government officials have put off planned reforms to the Send system until next year after a white paper setting out those changes was recently delayed.
Disadvantage and Financial Gaps
Based on the latest deprivation measures (IMD) for UK local authorities, several key cities members were included in the most disadvantaged in England.
- “Participating urban centers like several major towns place in the most deprived 30 across the country under the 2025 deprivation indices,” noted the report.
“While only one key city is in the top 10 for deprived neighbourhoods nationally, cities are far more likely to be in the worst-off 20% of the nation. The data underscores the extent of difficulties confronting municipal officials across major urban centers in the coming year,” the report added.
“Local government leaders have been explicit about the need for a equitable and lasting funding system that reflects and responds to the real levels of disadvantage and demand,” stated Michael Mordey.
“Lacking this, local authorities will continue to face impossible choices around which essential services to allocate spend to, and which to reduce, to the disadvantage of their communities.”
One in five of local authorities have reduced or weakened care services in the past 12 months, the study revealed.
