According to a new poll of local authorities, English councils are preparing to offload social clubs, sports centres, and retail spaces as they rely on a fire sale of assets to stabilize finances.
Growing Fiscal Pressures Prompt Asset Sales
The Key Cities Group representing major urban areas in England reported that 60% of local authorities are planning to dispose of properties to meet the rising costs of adult and children’s social care.
Councils have in the past come under fire for selling playing fields and open spaces to shore up their budgets, but they contend they must proceed to generate essential revenue from property disposals or face insolvency.
The group noted that a high proportion of authorities attempting to generate funds from a fire sale of holdings marked “a clear change from 2024, when the largest share (60%) of municipal officials said they would prioritise restructuring services and using savings to weather growing fiscal pressures.”
Detailed Examples of Proposed Disposals
Medway Council in Kent said its property management strategy included the sale of a shopping centre in a local town and a social club in Rochester to generate 20 million pounds over five years.
- Gillingham golf club and commercial properties held in Worcestershire and Suffolk, which all provide rental income for the authority, will additionally be disposed of under the strategy.
Council Tax Rises and Wider Fiscal Pressures
The survey of local authorities in the key cities group, which covers Sunderland, Southampton, Gloucester and Salford, further found that over seven in ten of councils will have to raise council taxes next April to cover the growing cost of essential services, higher levels of housing insecurity, and a longstanding housing shortage.
The authority explained it will proceed with asset sales after steep rises in the cost of children services, 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,” said Vince Maple.
He added: “There are demographic pressures which will persist to add to the strains we have. As a local government body, we had a 91% cut in our revenue support grant from over the past decade, which is very challenging.”
Countrywide Trends and Forecasts
A survey of regional authorities this week also found local finances being strained by the growing number of children and adults needing special educational assistance.
The County Councils Network projected that council deficits will reach 4.4 billion pounds a year by the end of the decade, as they struggle to manage rising needs.
Ministers have delayed scheduled changes to the Send system until next year after a white paper setting out those changes has been postponed.
Deprivation and Funding Shortfalls
Based on the most recent indices of deprivation (the Index of Multiple Deprivation) covering UK local authorities, many key cities members were among the most disadvantaged in the country.
- “Member cities like Hull, Bradford, Stoke-on-Trent, Sunderland and Wolverhampton place in the most deprived 30 across the country under the 2025 IMD measures,” said the report.
“Although only a single urban area is among the ten most deprived for deprived neighbourhoods nationally, cities are far more likely to be in the worst-off 20% of the nation. The figures highlights the scale of challenges facing local leaders across major urban centers in the coming year,” the analysis concluded.
“Council officials have been explicit about the necessity for a equitable and lasting financial structure that accounts for and responds to the actual extent of deprivation and need,” said a council leader.
“Lacking 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.”
One in five of councils have cut or compromised social care provision in the last year, the study revealed.
