Councils must reveal what they own

A report today on the Public Service website tells how the Coalition would like all local authorities to publish details of their assets. They report:


"Rather than cutting frontline services and funding to voluntary organisations, local authorities will have to publish full details of all their assets so the public can see which ones could be sold to generate revenue, the Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles has said.

To help them along, the coalition has produced a map of buildings and facilities that 87 English councils own, including hotels, restaurants, pubs, golf courses, sports stadiums, a sailing club, an airport and around 20 cinemas. Roughly 66 per cent of the country's £385bn worth of public sector assets are reckoned to be owned by councils.



"We need to know, now more than ever, exactly what assets are publicly owned," Pickles said. "The general public probably have no idea of the sheer scale and scope of property and land on the public sector's books. In many cases it goes way beyond traditional frontline services.

"I want the public sector to take a good hard look at what they own. By cataloguing each and every asset councils can help government find innovative new ways to utilise them, improve local services, keep council running costs down and save taxpayers' money."


We hope this does not presage a spate of misreporting about local government that tends to follow such 'hold the news' type stories. It's obviously no surprise that Council's own assets. Perhaps the eclectic mix might surprise, but surely in this new localised, big-society world, diversity of assets is a strength not a problem. Or is it that it's local authority ownership per se that is the problem here? The LGA says:

"Peter Fleming, chairman of the Local Government Association's improvement board, insisted that local authorities were already saving millions of pounds through smarter use of their assets. This included gathering different council services together under the one roof to reduce building management costs and sharing space with other councils, public bodies and the voluntary sector.

"The key issue remains that if the public sector is to find really big savings then Whitehall has to look at its own assets," he said. "Government agencies and the NHS must stop working in isolation and start sharing office space with each other and local authorities."