According to a new survey of local authorities, UK councils are planning to sell social clubs, athletic facilities, and shopping arcades as they bet on a fire sale of properties to balance the books.
Increasing Financial Challenges Drive Asset Sales
The Key Cities Group for major urban areas in the UK reported that 60% of local authorities are planning to sell assets to cover the rising costs of adult and children’s social care.
Councils have in the past come under fire for disposing of public land and land to shore up their finances, but they argue they must proceed to generate essential revenue from property disposals or face insolvency.
The group noted that a high proportion of authorities attempting to raise money from a quick sale of assets represented “a distinct shift from 2024, when the majority (60%) of local leaders stated they would focus on service redesigns and using financial reserves to weather growing financial challenges.”
Detailed Cases of Proposed Disposals
Medway Council in southeast England said its asset disposal plan featured the disposal of a retail complex in a local town and a community venue in Rochester to generate £20m over the next half-decade.
- A local golf course and commercial properties owned in two English counties, which all generate rent for the authority, will additionally be disposed of under the strategy.
Council Tax Increases and Wider Financial Strains
The survey of local authorities in the coalition, which covers Sunderland, Southampton, Gloucester and Salford, further found that over seven in ten of authorities will have to raise local levies next April to cover the rising cost of core provisions, increased rates of homelessness, and a longstanding accommodation deficit.
The authority said it will proceed with property disposals after steep rises in the cost of youth support, support for vulnerable learners, adult social care, and temporary accommodation.
“We are taking creative strategies but some of these take time to deliver both improved services and financial savings,” stated a council leader.
He added: “There are demographic pressures which will persist to increase the strains we have. As a local government body, we had a drastic reduction in our revenue support grant from over the past decade, which is extremely difficult.”
National Patterns and Forecasts
Research of regional authorities this week also found local finances being strained by the growing number of children and older individuals requiring Send support.
The County Councils Network 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 special educational needs framework until the coming year after a policy document outlining those changes has been postponed.
Disadvantage and Financial Gaps
According to 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 the country.
- “Participating urban centers like several major towns place in the most deprived 30 across the country under the 2025 IMD measures,” noted the study.
“While only a single urban area is among the ten most deprived for disadvantaged communities countrywide, urban areas are far more likely to be in the most deprived fifth of the nation. The figures underscores the scale of challenges facing local leaders across major urban centers in the next twelve months,” the analysis added.
“Council officials have been clear about the necessity for a fair and sustainable financial structure that accounts for and addresses the real levels of deprivation and demand,” stated a council leader.
“Without this, local authorities 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 councils have cut or compromised care services in the past 12 months, the survey found.
