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According to a new survey of municipal councils, UK councils are planning to sell social clubs, athletic facilities, and shopping arcades as they bet on a rapid disposal of properties to balance the books.

Growing Financial Pressures Prompt Asset Sales

The Key Cities Group for second-tier cities in England stated that 60% of councils are intending to dispose of properties to meet the rising costs of adult and children’s social care.

Councils have previously come under fire for selling playing fields and open spaces to shore up their budgets, but they argue they must proceed to raise vital cash from asset sales or declare themselves bankrupt.

This coalition noted that a high proportion of authorities seeking to raise money from a fire sale of assets marked “a distinct shift from 2024, when the majority (60%) of municipal officials said they would focus on restructuring services and using savings to weather growing fiscal pressures.”

Specific Cases of Proposed Sales

One local authority in southeast England said its property management strategy featured the disposal of a retail complex in Rainham and a social club in Rochester to raise £20m over the next half-decade.

• A local golf course and business parks held in Worcestershire and Suffolk, which all generate rent for the authority, will also be sold under the plan.

Local Levy Increases and Broader Financial 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 raise council taxes next spring to address the growing cost of essential services, higher levels of housing insecurity, and a longstanding housing shortage.

Medway council said it will proceed with asset sales after sharp increases in the cost of youth support, special educational needs and disability (Send) provision, elderly and disability services, and short-term housing.

“We are adopting creative strategies but some of these take time to achieve both better provisions and cost efficiency,” said Vince Maple.

He added: “We face population challenges which will continue to increase the pressures we have. As a unitary authority, we had a drastic reduction in our revenue support grant from 2010-24, which is extremely difficult.”

National Patterns and Projections

Research of county councils recently further found local finances being strained by the growing number of young people and adults needing special educational assistance.

A network of councils said that council deficits will hit £4.4bn a year by 2029, as they struggle to cope with rising needs.

Government officials have delayed planned reforms to the Send system until the coming year after a white paper outlining those reforms was recently delayed.

Disadvantage and Funding Gaps

Based on the latest indices of deprivation (the Index of Multiple Deprivation) for UK local authorities, several participating urban areas were included in the most deprived in England.

• “Member cities like Hull, Bradford, Stoke-on-Trent, Sunderland and Wolverhampton place in the top 30 nationally under the latest deprivation indices,” noted the study.

“Although only a single urban area is in the top 10 for deprived neighbourhoods countrywide, urban areas are far more likely to be in the worst-off 20% of the nation. The data highlights the scale of challenges confronting local leaders across key cities in the coming year,” the report concluded.

“Local government leaders have been explicit about the necessity for a fair and sustainable funding system that accounts for and responds to the real levels of disadvantage and need,” said a council leader.

“Without this, councils will persist to face difficult decisions around which essential services to allocate spend to, and which to cut, to the detriment of their communities.”

One in five of local authorities have cut or compromised social care provision in the last year, the survey found.