According to a new poll of local authorities, English councils are planning to offload community centers, sports centres, and shopping arcades as they bet on a fire sale of properties to stabilize finances.
Increasing Financial Pressures Prompt Asset Sales
A coalition of councils for second-tier cities in the UK reported that six out of ten of local authorities are intending to sell assets to meet the rising costs of adult and children’s social care.
Councils have previously come under fire for disposing of playing fields and open spaces to shore up their finances, but they argue they must continue to raise vital cash from asset sales or face insolvency.
This coalition said that a significant number of authorities seeking to generate funds from a fire sale of holdings represented “a clear change from 2024, when the largest share (60%) of local leaders stated they would prioritise service redesigns and using financial reserves to weather increasing fiscal pressures.”
Specific Cases of Planned Disposals
One local authority in Kent announced its asset disposal plan featured the disposal of a retail complex in a local town and a social club in another town to generate 20 million pounds 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 additionally be disposed of under the strategy.
Local Levy Rises and Broader Financial Strains
This research of councils in the coalition, which includes several urban centers, also found that more than 70% of councils will need to increase council taxes next April to cover the growing cost of essential services, increased rates of housing insecurity, and a persistent accommodation deficit.
The authority explained it will proceed with property disposals after steep rises in the cost of youth support, special educational needs and disability (Send) provision, adult social care, and temporary accommodation.
“We are adopting creative strategies but certain measures take time to deliver both better provisions and cost efficiency,” said a council leader.
He continued: “There are demographic pressures which will continue to increase the strains we have. As a local government body, we had a drastic reduction in our central funding from 2010-24, which is very challenging.”
Countrywide Trends and Forecasts
A survey of regional authorities recently also found local finances being stretched by the increasing figures of young people and adults requiring special educational assistance.
The County Councils Network projected that council deficits will reach 4.4 billion pounds a year by 2029, as they struggle to cope with rising needs.
Government officials have delayed planned reforms to the Send system until next year after a white paper outlining those reforms was recently delayed.
Disadvantage and Funding Shortfalls
According to the most recent deprivation measures (IMD) for English councils, several participating urban areas were included in the most disadvantaged in the country.
- “Participating urban centers like several major towns rank in the most deprived 30 across the country under the 2025 deprivation indices,” said the report.
“While only a single urban area is in the ten most deprived for deprived neighbourhoods countrywide, cities are far more likely to be in the most deprived fifth of the nation. The figures underscores the extent of difficulties confronting municipal officials across key cities in the coming year,” the report concluded.
“Council officials have been clear about the need for a fair and sustainable funding system that accounts for and addresses the real levels of deprivation and demand,” said Michael Mordey.
“Lacking this, councils will continue to face difficult decisions around which vital provisions to allocate spend to, and which to reduce, to the disadvantage of their communities.”
A fifth of councils have cut or compromised social care provision in the last year, the survey found.
