Proposals say money from the sales could be “recycled back into the council” to pay for regeneration projects, reports Nick Clark, Local Democracy Reporter
Dozens of council-owned shops and other commercial properties in Barking and Dagenham could be sold off in a plan to raise almost £6million.
Barking and Dagenham Council has published a list of 42 properties in the borough that it wants to sell, if approved by council leaders next week.
Proposals say money from the sales could be “recycled back into the council” to pay for regeneration and its own transformation.
The list of 42 properties include several shops that the council lets out to various businesses on leases. The council hopes to sell 19 of these by March next year for an estimated £3.2m.
These include several shops in Goresbrook Road, Ripple Road, Becontree Avenue, Green Lane and Church Street in Dagenham. They also include a former depot at 788 Dagenham Road.
Proposals say the council has selected these buildings as they are “underperforming assets where the council struggles to recoup its management costs” and bring in rents of less than £10,000 a year.
They say this income would be “outweighed” by the amount the council could sell the properties for.
The remaining 23 properties also include several shops in Barking and Dagenham. These could be sold in later years to bring in an estimated £2.6m.
They include five health centres; Five Elms, Markyate Road and Porters Avenue in Dagenham, and Queens Road in Barking.
The council says if these were sold it would “want some certainty” that this “will not result in the loss of health services”.
Proposals say this is a “low risk” as they are all let to the NHS on long leases, which the new owner would have little opportunity to change.
The other properties are also let out on a long lease, with at least 40 years remaining, and these would likely continue after a sale.
Councils are not allowed to use money they make from property sales to fund day-to-day services, or to pay off debts, without permission from the government.
However, the money for sales can be used to pay for new property and regeneration, or to fund plans to transform council services.
Barking and Dagenham Council says that work to make itself more efficient will be partly funded by money raised from property sales.
Leading Labour councillors are set to agree the properties should be marketed for sale at a cabinet committee meeting on Tuesday (10th).
