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Based on a recent study of municipal councils, UK councils are planning to sell community centers, athletic facilities, and shopping arcades as they bet on a fire sale of assets to stabilize finances.

Increasing Fiscal Pressures Prompt Asset Sales

The Key Cities Group representing second-tier cities in England stated that 60% of councils are planning to sell assets to meet the rising costs of social services for vulnerable individuals.

Local governments have previously come under fire for disposing of public land and open spaces to shore up their budgets, but they argue they must continue to generate essential revenue from asset sales or declare themselves bankrupt.

The group said that a high proportion of councils seeking to generate funds from a quick sale of assets represented “a distinct shift from 2024, when the largest share (six in ten) of municipal officials said they would prioritise restructuring services and using savings to weather growing financial challenges.”

Specific Cases of Planned Sales

Medway Council in southeast England said its asset disposal plan featured the disposal of a shopping centre in Rainham and a social club in another town to generate £20m over five years.

• Gillingham golf club and business parks owned in Worcestershire and Suffolk, which all provide rental income for Medway council, will also be disposed of under the strategy.

Local Levy Rises and Broader Fiscal Pressures

The survey of councils in the key cities group, which covers Sunderland, Southampton, Gloucester and Salford, also found that more than 70% of councils will have to raise council taxes next spring to address the rising 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, 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 deliver both better provisions and financial savings,” said Vince Maple.

He added: “There are demographic pressures which will continue to increase the pressures we have. As a unitary authority, we had a drastic reduction in our central funding from over the past decade, which is extremely difficult.”

National Trends and Forecasts

Research of regional authorities recently further found local finances being strained by the increasing figures of young people and older individuals requiring Send support.

The County Councils Network said that council deficits will reach £4.4bn a year by the end of the decade, as they grapple to cope with rising needs.

Government officials have put off planned reforms to the Send system until next year after a white paper outlining those changes has been postponed.

Disadvantage and Financial Shortfalls

According to the latest deprivation measures (the Index of Multiple Deprivation) covering UK local authorities, several participating urban areas were included in the most deprived in the country.

• “Member cities like Hull, Bradford, Stoke-on-Trent, Sunderland and Wolverhampton rank in the top 30 across the country under the 2025 deprivation indices,” noted the study.

“Although only one key city is in the ten most deprived for deprived neighbourhoods nationally, cities are far more likely to be in the most deprived fifth of the nation. The figures highlights the scale of challenges facing local leaders across key cities in the next twelve months,” the report concluded.

“Council officials have been explicit about the need for a equitable and lasting funding system that reflects and responds to the actual extent of disadvantage and need,” stated a council leader.

“Without this, local authorities will continue to face impossible choices around which essential services to allocate spend to, and which to reduce, to the disadvantage of their communities.”

A fifth of local authorities have reduced or weakened care services in the last year, the survey revealed.