According to a recent survey of municipal councils, English councils are planning to offload community centers, sports centres, and retail spaces as they rely on a fire sale of properties to stabilize finances.
Growing Fiscal Challenges Drive 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 rising costs of adult and children’s social care.
Councils have previously faced criticism for selling playing fields and land to shore up their finances, but they contend they must continue to raise vital cash from asset sales or declare themselves bankrupt.
The group noted that a high proportion of authorities attempting to generate funds from a quick sale of holdings represented “a distinct shift from 2024, when the majority (six in ten) of municipal officials stated they would prioritise restructuring services and utilising savings to weather increasing financial challenges.”
Detailed Examples of Planned Sales
Medway Council in Kent announced its asset disposal plan featured the sale of a shopping centre in a local town and a social club in Rochester to generate £20m over five years.
- Gillingham golf club and business parks held in two English counties, which all provide rental income for the authority, will also be sold under the plan.
Local Levy Increases and Wider Fiscal Strains
This research of councils in the coalition, which includes Sunderland, Southampton, Gloucester and Salford, also found that over seven in ten of authorities will have to increase local levies next spring to cover the rising cost of essential services, higher levels of housing insecurity, and a persistent housing shortage.
Medway council said 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 innovative approaches but certain measures take time to achieve both improved services and cost efficiency,” stated a council leader.
He added: “We face demographic pressures which will persist to increase the pressures we have. As a local government body, we had a drastic reduction in our revenue support grant from 2010-24, which is very challenging.”
National Trends and Forecasts
A survey of regional authorities this week also found council budgets being stretched by the increasing figures of young people and adults requiring Send support.
The County Councils Network projected that local shortfalls will hit £4.4bn a year by 2029, as they grapple to manage increased demand.
Ministers have put off planned reforms to the special educational needs framework until the coming year after a white paper outlining those reforms was recently delayed.
Disadvantage and Funding Gaps
Based on the most recent deprivation measures (IMD) covering UK local authorities, several participating urban areas were among the most disadvantaged in the country.
- “Participating urban centers like Hull, Bradford, Stoke-on-Trent, Sunderland and Wolverhampton rank in the top 30 nationally under the 2025 deprivation indices,” said the study.
“Although only a single urban area is among the top 10 for disadvantaged communities nationally, cities are far more likely to be in the most deprived fifth of the nation. The figures highlights the scale of difficulties confronting local leaders across key cities in the next twelve months,” the report added.
“Local government leaders have been clear about the necessity for a fair and sustainable funding system that accounts for and addresses the real levels of deprivation and need,” stated a council leader.
“Lacking this, councils will continue to face impossible choices around which essential services to allocate spend to, and which to cut, to the detriment of their communities.”
A fifth of local authorities have cut or compromised social care provision in the past 12 months, the survey found.
