According to a latest study of municipal councils, English councils are planning to sell community centers, sports centres, and shopping arcades as they bet on a rapid disposal of assets to stabilize finances.
Growing Fiscal Pressures Drive Asset Sales
A coalition of councils for major urban areas in the UK stated that six out of ten of local authorities are planning to sell assets to meet the rising costs of adult and children’s social care.
Councils have in the past faced criticism for selling playing fields and open spaces to support their finances, but they contend they must continue to generate essential revenue from asset sales or declare themselves bankrupt.
This coalition said that a high proportion of councils seeking to generate funds from a fire sale of assets represented “a distinct shift from 2024, when the largest share (60%) of local leaders stated they would focus on restructuring services and utilising financial reserves to weather increasing fiscal pressures.”
Specific Cases of Proposed Sales
One local authority in Kent said its property management strategy featured the sale of a shopping centre in Rainham and a community venue in another town to raise 20 million pounds over five years.
- A local golf course and commercial properties owned in Worcestershire and Suffolk, which all provide rental income for the authority, will additionally be sold under the strategy.
Local Levy Rises and Broader Financial Pressures
The survey of local authorities in the key cities group, which covers Sunderland, Southampton, Gloucester and Salford, also found that over seven in ten of authorities will need to raise council taxes next spring to address the rising cost of essential services, increased rates of homelessness, and a longstanding housing shortage.
Medway council 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 short-term housing.
“We are taking creative strategies but certain measures require time to achieve both improved services and financial savings,” stated a council leader.
He continued: “We face 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 over the past decade, which is extremely difficult.”
Countrywide Trends and Forecasts
Research of county councils this week also found council budgets being stretched by the growing number of young people and adults needing special educational assistance.
The County Councils Network said that local shortfalls will reach £4.4bn a year by 2029, as they struggle to cope with rising needs.
Ministers have delayed scheduled changes to the Send system until next year after a white paper outlining those reforms was recently delayed.
Deprivation and Financial Gaps
Based on the latest deprivation measures (the Index of Multiple Deprivation) covering English councils, several key cities members were included in the most deprived in England.
- “Member cities like several major towns rank in the top 30 across the country under the 2025 deprivation indices,” said the study.
“Although only a single urban area is in the ten most deprived for disadvantaged communities nationally, cities are far more likely to be in the worst-off 20% of the nation. The figures underscores the scale of challenges facing municipal officials across major urban centers in the coming year,” the report concluded.
“Local government leaders have been explicit about the necessity for a fair and sustainable funding system that accounts for and responds to the actual extent of disadvantage and need,” said a council leader.
“Without this, local authorities will continue to face difficult decisions around which essential services to fund, and which to cut, to the disadvantage of their communities.”
A fifth of councils have reduced or weakened social care provision in the last year, the survey revealed.
