According to a latest survey of municipal councils, English councils are planning to offload social clubs, sports centres, and shopping arcades as they bet on a fire sale of assets to stabilize finances.
Growing Fiscal Pressures Drive Asset Sales
The Key Cities Group representing second-tier cities in England reported that 60% of local authorities are planning to sell assets to meet the escalating costs of social services for vulnerable individuals.
Councils have in the past come under fire for selling playing fields and land to shore up their finances, but they argue they must continue to raise vital cash from asset sales or face insolvency.
The group said that a significant number of councils seeking to raise money from a fire sale of holdings represented “a distinct shift from 2024, when the majority (60%) of municipal officials said they would focus on service redesigns and using savings to manage growing financial challenges.”
Specific Examples of Planned Sales
Medway Council in Kent said its property management strategy featured the sale of a retail complex in a local town and a community venue in another town to raise £20m over five years.
- A local golf course and business parks held in Worcestershire and Suffolk, which all generate rent for Medway council, will additionally be sold under the plan.
Council Tax Rises and Wider Fiscal Strains
The survey of local authorities in the key cities group, which covers Sunderland, Southampton, Gloucester and Salford, also found that more than 70% of authorities will need to increase local levies next April to address the growing cost of essential services, higher levels of housing insecurity, and a longstanding housing shortage.
The authority said it will press ahead with asset sales after sharp increases in the cost of youth support, special educational needs and disability (Send) provision, adult social care, and short-term housing.
“We are taking creative strategies but some of these take time to achieve both better provisions and cost efficiency,” stated Vince Maple.
He added: “We face demographic pressures which will persist to add to the pressures we have. As a local government body, we had a 91% cut in our central funding from over the past decade, which is very challenging.”
Countrywide Trends and Forecasts
A survey of county councils this week further found local finances being strained by the increasing figures of young people and adults requiring Send support.
A network of councils said that local shortfalls will reach 4.4 billion pounds a year by 2029, as they struggle to manage increased demand.
Government officials have put off planned reforms to the special educational needs framework until the coming year after a policy document setting out those reforms has been postponed.
Disadvantage and Financial Gaps
Based on the most recent deprivation measures (IMD) for UK local authorities, several key cities members were among the most deprived 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 study.
“While only a single urban area is among the top 10 for deprived neighbourhoods nationally, urban areas are much more prone to be in the most deprived fifth of the nation. The figures underscores the scale of difficulties facing local leaders across major urban centers in the next twelve months,” the analysis added.
“Local government leaders have been explicit about the need for a fair and sustainable financial structure that accounts for and responds to the actual extent of deprivation and need,” said Michael Mordey.
“Lacking this, councils will continue to face difficult decisions around which essential services to fund, and which to cut, to the detriment of their residents.”
A fifth of local authorities have reduced or weakened social care provision in the last year, the survey revealed.
