Fire sale of assets ordered at Slough to close £480m ‘black hole’

Slough Council will be forced to sell thousands of properties and raise council tax by 20% after declaring effective insolvency a year ago. The scale of the financial and management chaos at the Labour-run council is revealed in a stark report by a team of government commissioners sent in to run the authority. It calls on ministers to give special powers to commissioners to effectively rebuild “the basics of local government”. Meanwhile, the council has been told to offload hundreds of millions of pounds’ worth of assets to fund its recovery programme, including its stock of about 6,700 council houses, and a number of development sites earmarked for housebuilding. The report warns council leaders that even a fire sale of assets – everything the authority owns except roads and parks is said to be “on the table” – may not be sufficient and it may need financial support from government for up to eight more years. Slough initially reported a £100m “black hole” in its budgets at the time of its section 114 notification in July 2021. This, however, has ballooned to £480m as auditors went through the books. It also owes £680m borrowed in recent years to finance a series of property developments. The Guardian