According to a new poll of municipal councils, UK councils are planning to sell community centers, sports centres, and shopping arcades as they rely on a fire sale of assets to stabilize finances.
Increasing Financial Challenges Drive Asset Sales
A coalition of councils representing major urban areas in England reported that six out of ten of local authorities are planning to dispose of properties to meet the rising costs of adult and children’s social care.
Councils have previously come under fire for disposing of public land and open spaces to support their budgets, but they argue they must proceed to generate essential revenue from property disposals or declare themselves bankrupt.
This coalition said that a high proportion of councils attempting to raise money from a quick sale of holdings marked “a clear change from 2024, when the largest share (six in ten) of municipal officials stated they would focus on restructuring services and utilising financial reserves to manage growing fiscal pressures.”
Detailed Examples of Planned Disposals
Medway Council in southeast England announced its property management strategy included the sale of a retail complex in Rainham and a community venue in another town to generate £20m over five years.
- Gillingham golf club and commercial properties owned in two English counties, which all generate rent for Medway council, will also be disposed of under the strategy.
Council Tax Rises and Broader Fiscal Strains
The survey of local authorities in the key cities group, which includes several urban centers, further found that more than 70% of councils will have to increase council taxes next spring to cover the rising cost of core provisions, higher levels of homelessness, and a longstanding housing shortage.
The authority said it will proceed with asset sales after sharp increases in the cost of youth support, special educational needs and disability (Send) provision, adult social care, and temporary accommodation.
“We are adopting creative strategies but certain measures require time to deliver both better provisions and financial savings,” stated Vince Maple.
He continued: “We face population challenges which will continue to add to the pressures we have. As a unitary authority, we had a drastic reduction in our revenue support grant from over the past decade, which is extremely difficult.”
Countrywide Patterns and Projections
A survey of county councils recently further found local finances being stretched by the increasing figures of young people and adults requiring special educational assistance.
The County Councils Network projected that local shortfalls will hit 4.4 billion pounds a year by 2029, as they struggle to manage increased demand.
Government officials have put off scheduled changes to the Send system until the coming year after a policy document setting out those reforms was recently delayed.
Deprivation and Funding Shortfalls
Based on the most recent deprivation measures (the Index of Multiple Deprivation) for English councils, several participating urban areas were among the most disadvantaged in the country.
- “Participating urban centers like Hull, Bradford, Stoke-on-Trent, Sunderland and Wolverhampton place in the most deprived 30 nationally under the 2025 deprivation indices,” noted the report.
“While only a single urban area is in the ten most deprived for deprived neighbourhoods nationally, urban areas are far more likely to be in the worst-off 20% of the nation. The data underscores the scale of difficulties facing municipal officials across key cities in the coming year,” the report added.
“Council officials have been clear about the need for a fair and sustainable financial structure that reflects and addresses the actual extent of disadvantage and demand,” said Michael Mordey.
“Without this, local authorities will persist to face impossible choices around which essential services to allocate spend to, and which to reduce, to the detriment of their communities.”
A fifth of councils have cut or compromised care services in the last year, the survey revealed.
