Based on a latest study of local authorities, English councils are planning to sell community centers, sports centres, and retail spaces as they rely on a fire sale of properties to stabilize finances.
Growing Financial Challenges Prompt Asset Sales
The Key Cities Group for major urban areas in England reported that 60% of local authorities are intending 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 public land and land to support their budgets, but they argue they must proceed to raise vital cash from property disposals or face insolvency.
The group said that a high proportion of authorities seeking to raise money from a quick sale of assets represented “a clear change from 2024, when the largest share (six in ten) of local leaders said they would prioritise restructuring services and using savings to weather growing fiscal pressures.”
Specific Cases of Proposed Disposals
Medway Council in Kent announced its asset disposal plan included the sale of a shopping centre in Rainham and a community venue in Rochester to raise £20m over the next half-decade.
- A local golf course and commercial properties owned in Worcestershire and Suffolk, which all generate rent for the authority, will additionally be sold under the plan.
Council Tax Increases and Broader Fiscal Pressures
This research of local authorities in the key cities group, which includes several urban centers, further found that over seven in ten of councils will need to raise council taxes next spring to cover the growing cost of essential services, higher levels of housing insecurity, and a longstanding housing shortage.
The authority said it will proceed with asset sales 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 adopting innovative approaches but some of these require time to deliver both improved services and cost efficiency,” stated a council leader.
He added: “We face demographic pressures which will persist to add to the pressures we have. As a local government body, we had a 91% cut in our central funding from 2010-24, which is extremely difficult.”
National Patterns and Forecasts
A survey of county councils recently also found council budgets being stretched by the growing number of children and adults requiring Send support.
A network of councils said that local shortfalls will reach £4.4bn a year by 2029, as they grapple to manage increased demand.
Government officials have delayed planned reforms to the Send system until next year after a policy document setting out those reforms has been postponed.
Deprivation and Funding Shortfalls
According to the latest deprivation measures (the Index of Multiple Deprivation) covering English councils, several key cities members were among 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 deprivation indices,” noted the report.
“Although only one key city is in the ten most deprived for disadvantaged communities countrywide, cities are much more prone to be in the worst-off 20% of England. The data highlights the extent of difficulties confronting local leaders across major urban centers in the next twelve months,” the report concluded.
“Council officials have been explicit about the necessity for a fair and sustainable funding system that accounts for and responds to the actual extent of deprivation and demand,” said a council leader.
“Without this, local authorities will persist to face impossible choices around which essential services to fund, and which to cut, to the detriment of their communities.”
One in five of councils have reduced or weakened care services in the past 12 months, the study revealed.
