According to a latest study of local authorities, UK councils are preparing to sell community centers, sports centres, and shopping arcades as they rely on a fire sale of assets to balance the books.
Growing Fiscal Challenges Drive Asset Sales
The Key Cities Group for major urban areas in the UK reported that six out of ten of councils are planning to dispose of properties to meet the rising costs of adult and children’s social care.
Local governments have in the past faced criticism for disposing of playing fields and land to shore up their finances, but they contend they must continue 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 represented “a distinct shift from 2024, when the majority (six in ten) of local leaders said they would prioritise service redesigns and using savings to weather increasing financial challenges.”
Detailed Examples of Planned Sales
Medway Council in Kent announced its asset disposal plan featured the disposal of a shopping centre in Rainham and a community venue in another town to generate 20 million pounds over the next half-decade.
- Gillingham golf club and business parks held in Worcestershire and Suffolk, which all generate rent for the authority, will also be disposed of under the strategy.
Local Levy Increases and Wider Financial Pressures
The survey of councils in the coalition, which includes Sunderland, Southampton, Gloucester and Salford, further found that more than 70% of authorities will need to raise council taxes next spring to cover the growing cost of core provisions, higher levels of housing insecurity, and a longstanding accommodation deficit.
Medway council said it will press ahead with property disposals after steep rises in the cost of children services, support for vulnerable learners, adult social care, and short-term housing.
“We are taking creative strategies but some of these require time to deliver both improved services and cost efficiency,” said a council leader.
He added: “We face demographic pressures which will persist to add to the pressures we have. As a local government body, we had a drastic reduction in our central funding from over the past decade, which is extremely difficult.”
Countrywide Patterns and Forecasts
A survey of county councils this week also found council budgets being stretched by the increasing figures of children and older individuals needing Send support.
The County Councils Network projected that council deficits will reach £4.4bn a year by 2029, as they grapple to cope with rising needs.
Government officials have put off planned reforms to the Send system until the coming year after a policy document setting out those changes was recently delayed.
Disadvantage and Funding Shortfalls
According to the most recent indices of deprivation (the Index of Multiple Deprivation) for UK local authorities, many key cities members were included in the most deprived in the country.
- “Member cities like several major towns rank in the most deprived 30 across the country under the 2025 IMD measures,” noted the study.
“While only a single urban area is in the top 10 for deprived neighbourhoods countrywide, cities are much more prone to be in the most deprived fifth of England. The data underscores the extent of difficulties facing local leaders across key cities in the coming year,” the report added.
“Council officials have been explicit about the necessity for a equitable and lasting funding system that accounts for and addresses the actual extent of disadvantage and need,” said Michael Mordey.
“Lacking this, local authorities will persist to face impossible choices around which vital provisions to fund, and which to reduce, to the disadvantage of their residents.”
A fifth of local authorities have reduced or weakened social care provision in the past 12 months, the study found.
