According to a latest study of municipal councils, English councils are planning to sell social clubs, sports centres, and retail spaces as they rely on a fire sale of assets to stabilize finances.
Growing Fiscal Pressures Drive Asset Sales
The Key Cities Group for major urban areas in the UK stated that 60% of councils are intending to dispose of properties to cover the rising costs of social services for vulnerable individuals.
Councils have previously come under fire for disposing of public land and land to support their finances, but they contend they must proceed to raise vital cash from asset sales or declare themselves bankrupt.
The group noted that a high proportion of authorities attempting to generate funds from a fire sale of holdings marked “a distinct shift from 2024, when the largest share (60%) of municipal officials said they would focus on service redesigns and using savings to manage increasing fiscal pressures.”
Detailed Examples of Proposed Disposals
Medway Council in southeast England announced its property management strategy featured the sale of a retail complex in Rainham and a community venue in Rochester to raise £20m over five years.
- A local golf course and business parks held in Worcestershire and Suffolk, which all generate rent for the authority, will additionally be sold under the strategy.
Local Levy Increases and Wider Fiscal Pressures
This research of local authorities in the coalition, which covers several urban centers, also found that more than 70% of councils will have to increase local levies next spring to cover the rising cost of essential services, higher levels of homelessness, and a longstanding accommodation deficit.
Medway council explained it will proceed with property disposals after sharp increases in the cost of youth support, special educational needs and disability (Send) provision, elderly and disability services, and short-term housing.
“We are taking creative strategies but some of these require time to achieve both improved services and cost efficiency,” stated Vince Maple.
He added: “We face population challenges which will continue to add to the strains we have. As a unitary authority, we had a drastic reduction in our revenue support grant from over the past decade, which is very challenging.”
Countrywide Trends and Forecasts
A survey of county councils recently further found council budgets being stretched by the increasing figures of young people and adults requiring special educational assistance.
The County Councils Network said that local shortfalls will hit £4.4bn a year by 2029, as they struggle to cope with increased demand.
Ministers have put off planned reforms to the special educational needs framework until the coming year after a white paper setting out those changes has been postponed.
Deprivation and Funding Gaps
Based on the most recent indices of deprivation (the Index of Multiple Deprivation) for English councils, many participating urban areas were among the most deprived in the country.
- “Participating urban centers like Hull, Bradford, Stoke-on-Trent, Sunderland and Wolverhampton rank in the most deprived 30 across the country under the 2025 IMD measures,” noted the study.
“Although 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 figures underscores the scale of difficulties confronting local leaders across major urban centers in the next twelve months,” the report concluded.
“Local government leaders have been explicit about the need for a fair and sustainable funding system that accounts for and responds to the actual extent of disadvantage and demand,” stated Michael Mordey.
“Without this, local authorities will persist to face difficult decisions around which vital provisions to fund, and which to reduce, to the detriment of their communities.”
One in five of local authorities have reduced or weakened care services in the past 12 months, the study found.
