According to a recent study of local authorities, UK councils are planning to sell social clubs, sports centres, and shopping arcades as they bet on a fire sale of properties to balance the books.
Growing Financial Pressures Prompt Asset Sales
The Key Cities Group for major urban areas in England reported that six out of ten of local authorities are intending to dispose of properties to cover the escalating costs of adult and children’s social care.
Councils have in the past come under fire for selling public land and open spaces to support their budgets, but they argue they must proceed to generate essential revenue from asset sales or declare themselves bankrupt.
This coalition said that a high proportion of councils seeking to raise money from a quick sale of assets marked “a clear change from 2024, when the majority (six in ten) of municipal officials said they would focus on restructuring services and utilising financial reserves to weather increasing financial challenges.”
Specific Examples of Proposed Disposals
Medway Council in Kent said its asset disposal plan featured the sale of a shopping centre in a local town and a social club in another town to raise £20m over the next half-decade.
- Gillingham golf club and business parks owned in Worcestershire and Suffolk, which all provide rental income for the authority, will also be sold under the plan.
Council Tax Rises and Wider Fiscal Strains
This research of councils in the key cities group, which includes several urban centers, also found that more than 70% of councils will need to increase local levies next spring to address the rising cost of essential services, higher levels of housing insecurity, and a persistent accommodation deficit.
The authority said it will press ahead with property disposals after steep rises 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 take time to deliver both improved services and cost efficiency,” stated a council leader.
He continued: “There are population challenges which will persist to add to the strains we have. As a unitary authority, we had a drastic reduction in our central funding from over the past decade, which is very challenging.”
Countrywide Patterns and Projections
Research of county councils this week further found local finances being stretched by the increasing figures of young people and adults requiring special educational assistance.
A network of councils projected that council deficits will reach 4.4 billion pounds a year by the end of the decade, as they grapple to cope with rising needs.
Ministers have delayed planned reforms to the special educational needs framework until next year after a white paper outlining those reforms was recently delayed.
Deprivation and Financial Gaps
Based on the most recent deprivation measures (IMD) covering UK local authorities, several key cities members were among the most disadvantaged in the country.
- “Member cities like Hull, Bradford, Stoke-on-Trent, Sunderland and Wolverhampton rank in the top 30 nationally under the 2025 deprivation indices,” noted the study.
“While only a single urban area is among the ten most deprived for disadvantaged communities countrywide, cities are far more likely to be in the most deprived fifth of the nation. The data highlights the scale of difficulties confronting municipal officials across major urban centers in the next twelve months,” the report concluded.
“Local government leaders have been clear about the necessity for a equitable and lasting funding system that accounts for and responds to the actual extent of deprivation and demand,” stated Michael Mordey.
“Lacking this, councils will continue to face impossible choices around which vital provisions to allocate spend to, and which to reduce, to the disadvantage of their residents.”
One in five of local authorities have cut or compromised care services in the past 12 months, the study found.
