According to a new poll of local authorities, UK councils are preparing to offload social clubs, sports centres, and shopping arcades as they rely on a rapid disposal of assets to balance the books.
Increasing Fiscal Pressures Prompt Asset Sales
A coalition of councils representing major urban areas in England reported that 60% of councils are planning to dispose of properties to meet the rising costs of adult and children’s social care.
Councils have previously come under fire for disposing of public land and open spaces to support their budgets, but they argue they must proceed to generate essential revenue from asset sales or face insolvency.
The group said that a high proportion of authorities seeking to generate funds from a fire sale of assets marked “a clear change from 2024, when the largest share (six in ten) of municipal officials stated they would focus on restructuring services and utilising financial reserves to weather increasing financial challenges.”
Specific Cases of Proposed Sales
Medway Council in Kent said its asset disposal plan included the disposal of a retail complex in a local town and a community venue in another town to raise £20m over the next half-decade.
- Gillingham golf club and business parks owned in Worcestershire and Suffolk, which all generate rent for the authority, will additionally be sold under the strategy.
Council Tax Increases and Wider Fiscal Pressures
The survey of local authorities in the coalition, which includes several urban centers, further found that more than 70% of councils will need to increase council taxes next spring to cover the growing cost of core provisions, higher levels of homelessness, and a longstanding housing shortage.
Medway council explained it will proceed with property disposals after sharp increases in the cost of children services, support for vulnerable learners, elderly and disability services, and short-term housing.
“We are adopting creative strategies but some of these take time to achieve both improved services and cost efficiency,” stated a council leader.
He added: “We face demographic pressures which will persist to increase the pressures we have. As a local government body, we had a drastic reduction in our central funding from 2010-24, which is very challenging.”
Countrywide Trends and Forecasts
Research of regional authorities recently also found council budgets being strained by the growing number of children and adults needing special educational assistance.
A network of councils said that local shortfalls will reach £4.4bn a year by the end of the decade, as they grapple to manage increased demand.
Ministers have delayed scheduled changes to the special educational needs framework until next year after a policy document outlining those reforms has been postponed.
Disadvantage and Financial Shortfalls
Based on the latest deprivation measures (the Index of Multiple Deprivation) for UK local authorities, many participating urban areas were among the most deprived in the country.
- “Member cities like Hull, Bradford, Stoke-on-Trent, Sunderland and Wolverhampton rank in the most deprived 30 nationally under the 2025 deprivation indices,” said the report.
“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 England. The figures highlights the scale of challenges facing municipal officials across key cities in the next twelve months,” the analysis added.
“Council officials have been clear about the necessity for a fair and sustainable financial structure that reflects and responds to the actual extent of disadvantage and need,” said a council leader.
“Lacking this, local authorities will continue to face difficult decisions around which vital provisions to allocate spend to, and which to reduce, to the detriment of their communities.”
A fifth of local authorities have cut or compromised care services in the past 12 months, the survey found.
