According to a recent study of local authorities, English councils are planning to sell community centers, athletic facilities, and shopping arcades as they rely on a fire sale of assets to stabilize finances.
Growing Fiscal Challenges Drive Asset Sales
A coalition of councils for major urban areas in England reported that 60% of councils are planning to sell assets to cover the escalating costs of adult and children’s social care.
Local governments have previously come under fire for disposing of playing fields and land to support their budgets, but they argue they must proceed to raise vital cash from property disposals or face insolvency.
This coalition said that a high proportion of councils attempting to generate funds from a quick sale of assets represented “a distinct shift from 2024, when the largest share (60%) of municipal officials said they would prioritise restructuring services and using savings to weather growing financial challenges.”
Detailed Cases of Planned Disposals
Medway Council in southeast England said its asset disposal plan featured the sale of a retail complex in a local town and a community venue in Rochester to generate £20m over five years.
- A local golf course and business parks owned in Worcestershire and Suffolk, which all generate rent for the authority, will additionally be sold under the strategy.
Local Levy Increases and Broader Financial Pressures
The survey of local authorities in the key cities group, which covers several urban centers, also found that more than 70% of councils will need to raise council taxes next April to address the rising cost of essential services, increased rates of homelessness, and a longstanding housing shortage.
Medway council explained it will press ahead with property disposals after steep rises in the cost of children services, special educational needs and disability (Send) provision, adult social care, and short-term housing.
“We are adopting innovative approaches but some of these take time to achieve both better provisions and financial savings,” said Vince Maple.
He continued: “There are demographic pressures which will continue to add to the pressures we have. As a local government body, we had a drastic reduction in our central funding from over the past decade, which is very challenging.”
National Trends and Projections
A survey of regional authorities this week further found council budgets being strained by the increasing figures of young people and adults needing special educational assistance.
A network of councils projected that council deficits will reach £4.4bn a year by the end of the decade, as they grapple to cope with increased demand.
Ministers have delayed planned reforms to the Send system until next year after a white paper setting out those changes was recently delayed.
Deprivation and Funding Shortfalls
Based on the most recent indices of deprivation (the Index of Multiple Deprivation) for UK local authorities, several participating urban areas were included in the most disadvantaged in England.
- “Participating urban centers like several major towns rank in the most deprived 30 nationally under the 2025 deprivation indices,” said the study.
“While only one key city is in the ten most deprived for deprived neighbourhoods nationally, cities are far more likely to be in the worst-off 20% of England. The figures underscores the extent of challenges facing municipal officials across major urban centers in the next twelve months,” the report added.
“Council officials have been explicit about the need for a equitable and lasting funding system that accounts for and addresses the actual extent of deprivation and need,” stated a council leader.
“Lacking this, local authorities will persist 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 cut or compromised care services in the last year, the study found.
