Slough Council requests to sell nearly £300m of its properties

Local authority chiefs will be considering selling up to £600m of the town’s 6,700 assets, which are worth a total value of £1.2bn, over the next five years.

This is in order to make borrowing “more manageable” by cutting its £760m debt to £335m by 2027 as well as reducing its predicted budget gap of £308m by 2025.

Senior councillors gave the go-ahead last year for a team of external specialists, who have not been publicly named by the council, to deal with the operational aspects of disposing of the assets.

At a full council meeting, councillor Rob Anderson (Lab: Britwell & Northborough), lead member for financial oversight, council assets, and performance, announced they have formally requested government for them to sell £201m-worth of the council’s properties this year and a further £72m to cover next year as part of the recovery plan.

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This is known as a capitalisation direction, which would allow the council to use capital money as revenue for day-to-day spending.

It is still unknown which assets the council is eyeing to dispose of, but past purchases include the Odeon Cinema in Basingstoke, a Wickes store in Wolverhampton, and the Moxy Hotel in the town.

The Odeon in Basingstoke (Image: Google Maps)

Speaking at the meeting on Thursday, January 27, Cllr Anderson said: “We have made our submission to DLUHC [Department for Levelling Up, Housing, and Communities] regarding the capitalisation, which amounts to £201m for the figure up to date and a further £72m to cover next year.

“We’ve replied to DLUHC’s request for questions, clarifications, and answers, and we await further discussions with them when they will give us that further capitalisation directive.”

He also said all of the council’s short-term borrowing has been ‘re-financed’ and residents will fully know the financial implications on them when the 2022/23 budget is brought forward by the end of March.

Tory leader Dexter Smith (Colnbrook with Poyle) (Image: Slough Conservatives)

Conservative leader Dexter Smith (Colnbrook with Poyle) said each time the council talks about the capitalisation, the asking figure “seems to be bigger”.

He said: “As we look at these numbers, they seem to get worst and worst, and they represent a whole-scale failure of this council across every department. It certainly cannot be blamed on the finance department.”

Cllr Smith asked what is “plan B” if the government denies the council’s request. He also cited the minimum revenue provision (MRP), money set aside to pay off borrowing, has been “not quoted properly” after it increased to £69m.

“How are we going to cope with having that [MRP] in our budget next year? The only answer is that the council tax is going to go up to record levels. We already have record levels of debt in this council, the biggest debt in the country,” Cllr Smith continued.

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Cllr Anderson reiterated this is the reason why the council is requesting a capitalisation direction to government so it can set a “realistic” and “achievable” budget going forward.

He couldn’t comment on the legality of the previous budgets but admitted the financial details were wrong.

The finance team are currently digging through the council’s past accounts to bring to light past mistakes. It has been previously reported 60 per cent of the notes in the 2018/19 accounts will have to be ‘restated’ due to inaccuracies and mistakes.

Cllr Anderson said: “The team is still uncovering some issues that go back some time. So, it’s still a work in progress and we’ve been very clear with DLUHC about that, that things presented to them are snapshots in time and until we get those numbers fully bottomed out, things may still change.”