According to a latest poll of municipal councils, UK councils are preparing to sell community centers, sports centres, and retail spaces as they rely on a fire sale of properties to stabilize finances.
Growing Financial Pressures Drive Asset Sales
The Key Cities Group representing major urban areas in the UK reported that 60% of local authorities are intending to dispose of properties to meet the rising costs of adult and children’s social care.
Councils have in the past faced criticism for disposing of public land and open spaces to shore up their finances, but they contend they must continue to generate essential revenue from asset sales or face insolvency.
The group said that a high proportion of authorities attempting to raise money from a fire sale of assets marked “a clear change from 2024, when the largest share (60%) of local leaders stated they would prioritise restructuring services and utilising savings to weather increasing fiscal pressures.”
Detailed Cases of Planned Disposals
One local authority in southeast England said its asset disposal plan featured the sale of a shopping centre in a local town and a community venue in Rochester to generate £20m over five years.
- Gillingham golf club and commercial properties owned in Worcestershire and Suffolk, which all generate rent for Medway council, will also be disposed of under the strategy.
Council Tax Rises and Broader Financial Strains
This research of local authorities in the key cities group, which includes Sunderland, Southampton, Gloucester and Salford, further found that over seven in ten of councils will have to increase local levies next spring to cover the growing cost of essential services, higher levels of housing insecurity, and a persistent accommodation deficit.
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, adult social care, and temporary accommodation.
“We are adopting creative strategies but certain measures require time to achieve both improved services and financial savings,” stated 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 revenue support grant from 2010-24, which is very challenging.”
Countrywide Patterns and Forecasts
A survey of county councils recently further found council budgets being stretched by the growing number of young people and older individuals requiring special educational assistance.
A network of councils said that council deficits will hit £4.4bn a year by 2029, as they grapple to manage rising needs.
Ministers have put off scheduled changes to the special educational needs framework until the coming year after a white paper setting out those changes was recently delayed.
Disadvantage and Financial Gaps
According to the latest indices of deprivation (IMD) covering English councils, several participating urban areas were included in 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 report.
“Although only a single urban area is among the ten most deprived for deprived neighbourhoods nationally, cities are much more prone to be in the worst-off 20% of England. The data underscores the extent of challenges confronting local leaders across major urban centers in the coming year,” the report added.
“Council officials have been clear about the need for a equitable and lasting funding system that reflects and addresses the real levels of deprivation and need,” stated Michael Mordey.
“Lacking this, local authorities will persist to face impossible choices around which essential services to fund, and which to cut, to the detriment of their communities.”
A fifth of councils have reduced or weakened social care provision in the last year, the survey found.
