According to a recent survey of municipal councils, UK councils are preparing to offload social clubs, athletic facilities, and shopping arcades as they rely on a fire sale of assets to balance the books.
Increasing Fiscal Pressures Drive Asset Sales
The Key Cities Group representing major urban areas in England reported that six out of ten of local authorities are planning to sell assets to meet the rising costs of adult and children’s social care.
Councils have previously faced criticism for selling public land and open spaces to support their budgets, but they argue they must proceed to generate essential revenue from property disposals or face insolvency.
This coalition noted that a high proportion of authorities seeking to raise money from a quick sale of holdings represented “a distinct shift from 2024, when the majority (six in ten) of municipal officials stated they would focus on service redesigns and using financial reserves to weather growing financial challenges.”
Specific Cases of Planned Disposals
Medway Council in southeast England said its asset disposal plan included the sale of a shopping centre in a local town and a community venue in another town to raise £20m over five years.
- Gillingham golf club and commercial properties owned in Worcestershire and Suffolk, which all provide rental income for the authority, will also be sold under the plan.
Local Levy Rises and Wider Financial Strains
The survey of local authorities in the coalition, which includes several urban centers, further found that over seven in ten of councils will need to increase council taxes next spring to cover the growing cost of core provisions, increased rates of homelessness, and a persistent housing shortage.
The authority explained it will press ahead with asset sales after sharp increases in the cost of children services, support for vulnerable learners, elderly and disability services, and short-term housing.
“We are taking creative strategies but some of these take time to achieve both improved services and cost efficiency,” said a council leader.
He continued: “We face population challenges which will continue to increase the pressures 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 Trends and Forecasts
A survey of county councils this week further found local finances being stretched by the growing number of young people and older individuals needing Send support.
A network of councils said that local shortfalls will hit £4.4bn a year by the end of the decade, as they struggle to manage rising needs.
Ministers have put off scheduled changes to the special educational needs framework until next year after a white paper outlining those reforms has been postponed.
Disadvantage and Funding Gaps
According to the most recent deprivation measures (IMD) covering UK local authorities, many participating urban areas were among the most disadvantaged in England.
- “Member cities like Hull, Bradford, Stoke-on-Trent, Sunderland and Wolverhampton place in the most deprived 30 nationally under the 2025 deprivation indices,” noted the report.
“Although only one key city is in the top 10 for disadvantaged communities countrywide, urban areas are far more likely to be in the worst-off 20% of the nation. The figures highlights the extent of challenges confronting local leaders across key cities in the coming year,” the analysis added.
“Local government leaders 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 need,” said Michael Mordey.
“Without this, local authorities will continue to face impossible choices around which essential services to allocate spend to, and which to reduce, to the detriment of their residents.”
A fifth of local authorities have cut or compromised care services in the past 12 months, the study found.
