£15bn of public assets sold by English councils since 2010 amid budget shortfalls

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About 75,000 public assets, worth about £15bn, have been sold by English councils since 2010, in part to plug holes in their budgets, research by IPPR has found.

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21 Sep 2023

An average of 6,000 council assets – such as playing fields, community centres, libraries, youth clubs and swimming pools – worth £1.2bn have been sold each year in the past 13 years, the thinktank estimated, through analysis of government data and statistics from a freedom of information request.

By contrast, the research estimated just 2,500 assets came newly into community ownership during the same time.

The research comes as Birmingham city council said it would sell further assets as part of an attempt to get its finances back on track, despite having sold more assets than any other council in the nine years after the start of swingeing government cuts to council budgets in 2010.

A change in the law in 2016 meant councils no longer had to buy new public assets with money made from selling them and instead could use the money to make up for shortfalls in funding.

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