According to a recent poll of municipal councils, English councils are planning to sell community centers, athletic facilities, and shopping arcades as they bet on a fire sale of assets to stabilize finances.
Increasing Fiscal Pressures Drive Asset Sales
The Key Cities Group representing major urban areas in England reported that 60% of local authorities are intending to dispose of properties to cover the escalating costs of adult and children’s social care.
Councils have in the past come under fire for selling playing fields and land to support their budgets, but they contend they must continue to generate essential revenue from asset sales or declare themselves bankrupt.
The group said that a significant number of councils seeking to generate funds from a quick sale of assets represented “a distinct shift from 2024, when the majority (60%) of municipal officials stated they would focus on service redesigns and utilising financial reserves to manage growing fiscal pressures.”
Detailed Cases of Planned Sales
Medway Council in Kent announced its property management strategy featured the sale of a shopping centre in a local town and a social club in another town to generate £20m over the next half-decade.
- Gillingham golf club and business parks held in Worcestershire and Suffolk, which all provide rental income for the authority, will also be sold under the strategy.
Council Tax Rises and Wider Fiscal Strains
This research of councils in the key cities group, which covers Sunderland, Southampton, Gloucester and Salford, further found that more than 70% of authorities will have to increase local levies next April to address the rising cost of core provisions, higher levels of housing insecurity, and a persistent housing shortage.
Medway council explained it will proceed with property disposals after steep rises in the cost of children services, special educational needs and disability (Send) provision, elderly and disability services, and temporary accommodation.
“We are taking creative strategies but some of these take time to achieve both better provisions and cost efficiency,” said Vince Maple.
He added: “There are population challenges which will persist to increase the pressures we have. As a local government body, we had a drastic reduction in our central funding from 2010-24, which is extremely difficult.”
Countrywide Trends and Projections
A survey of regional authorities recently also found council budgets being strained by the increasing figures of young people and older individuals requiring special educational assistance.
The County Councils Network projected that local shortfalls will reach £4.4bn a year by 2029, as they grapple to cope with increased demand.
Ministers have put off planned reforms to the special educational needs framework until next year after a policy document setting out those reforms was recently delayed.
Deprivation and Financial Shortfalls
Based on the latest indices of deprivation (the Index of Multiple Deprivation) for English councils, several participating urban areas were included in the most deprived in England.
- “Participating urban centers like Hull, Bradford, Stoke-on-Trent, Sunderland and Wolverhampton place in the top 30 nationally under the 2025 IMD measures,” said the study.
“Although only one key city is in the ten most deprived for disadvantaged communities nationally, cities are much more prone to be in the worst-off 20% of the nation. The data underscores the scale of difficulties facing municipal officials across key cities in the next twelve months,” the report added.
“Local government leaders have been explicit about the need for a equitable and lasting funding system that accounts for and addresses the actual extent of disadvantage and demand,” stated a council leader.
“Without this, local authorities will continue to face difficult decisions around which essential services to fund, and which to reduce, to the disadvantage of their residents.”
One in five of councils have reduced or weakened care services in the past 12 months, the study revealed.