Based on a new poll of local authorities, English councils are planning to offload social clubs, sports centres, and shopping arcades as they rely on a fire sale of assets to stabilize finances.
Growing Financial Challenges Drive Asset Sales
The Key Cities Group for second-tier cities in England stated that 60% of councils are planning to sell assets to meet the escalating costs of social services for vulnerable individuals.
Local governments have in the past 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 said that a significant number of authorities seeking to generate funds from a fire sale of holdings represented “a distinct shift from 2024, when the majority (six in ten) of local leaders stated they would focus on service redesigns and utilising savings to manage growing financial challenges.”
Specific Cases of Planned Disposals
Medway Council in Kent said 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 commercial properties owned in Worcestershire and Suffolk, which all generate rent for Medway council, will additionally be disposed of under the plan.
Council Tax Rises and Wider Fiscal Pressures
The survey of councils in the key cities group, which covers Sunderland, Southampton, Gloucester and Salford, further found that over seven in ten of authorities will have to raise council taxes next spring to address the rising cost of core provisions, increased rates of homelessness, 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, elderly and disability services, and short-term housing.
“We are adopting creative strategies but some of these require time to achieve both improved services and cost efficiency,” said Vince Maple.
He continued: “There are population challenges which will continue to add to the pressures we have. As a unitary authority, we had a 91% cut in our central funding from 2010-24, which is extremely difficult.”
National Patterns and Forecasts
Research of county councils recently further found council budgets being strained by the growing number of young people and adults requiring special educational assistance.
A network of councils said that local shortfalls will hit £4.4bn a year by the end of the decade, as they grapple to manage rising needs.
Ministers have delayed scheduled changes to the special educational needs framework until the coming year after a white paper outlining those reforms has been postponed.
Disadvantage and Financial Gaps
According to the latest deprivation measures (the Index of Multiple Deprivation) covering UK local authorities, several participating urban areas were included in the most disadvantaged in the country.
- “Member cities like several major towns place in the most deprived 30 nationally under the 2025 IMD measures,” said the report.
“Although only a single urban area is among the top 10 for deprived neighbourhoods countrywide, urban areas are far more likely to be in the worst-off 20% of England. The data underscores the scale of challenges confronting local leaders across key cities in the coming year,” the report added.
“Council officials have been explicit about the need for a fair and sustainable funding system that accounts for and responds to the actual extent of deprivation and demand,” said a council leader.
“Without this, local authorities will persist to face impossible choices around which vital provisions to fund, and which to reduce, to the disadvantage of their residents.”
A fifth of councils have cut or compromised social care provision in the past 12 months, the study found.
