‘We're not selling the Crown Jewels’: Plans approved to speed up sale of council buildings

Senior councillors in Wakefield have approved plans to speed up the sale of council buildings across the district.

Between 100 and 150 assets owned by the Reform-led authority could be “realistically” sold over the next two years under the scheme.

Wakefield Council leader Karl Johnson said the move was not about “selling the Crown Jewels” and blamed the previous Labour administration for allowing some properties to “go to rack and ruin.”

A report said the council’s portfolio “remains significant”, as it currently had 1,680 assets, 546 of which have one or more buildings and total almost 36.4m square metres.

Graham Ridler, the council’s deputy portfolio holder for resources and property, told a cabinet meeting on Tuesday (September 22) that the estate size was the equivalent of almost 5,000 football pitches.

He said: “For too long, the council has retained hundreds of assets with no clear plan for what’s intended to do with this vast estate.

“The new approach will allow the property service to meet essential revenue budget savings by reducing holding costs and generating capital receipts, making sure only assets with a clear operational, commercial, strategic or community justification are retained.”

Coun Ridler said buildings would be sold if they had “reached the end of their life, are no longer fit for purpose or simply do not offer good value for money.”

He added: “Local taxpayers can be assured that we won’t be wasting money on maintaining buildings we don’t need any more.”

A number of high-profile building disposals were approved under Labour, including Woolley Hall, which sold at auction last month for £1.5m, and Castleford Civic Hall, which is to be demolished to build education facilities.

Just over £6.5m was generated from the disposal of 18 assets during the last financial year and the council made almost £17m from 32 disposals during 2024/25.

Around 6.7% of the entire portfolio – 113 properties – is currently categorised as vacant.

The report said a “more disciplined and accelerated” to asset disposals approach was required.

Feasibility work is already taking place on the potential sales of Pontefract Municipal Offices, Castleford’s Five Towns Resource Centre, Normanton Block C offices and Queens House, in Wakefield city centre.

Coun Johnson, who took over as council leader in May this year after Reform’s victory as the local elections, said: “We are not selling the Crown Jewels. The fact of the matter is, what were the Crown Jewels were just destroyed.

“Just leaving buildings to go to rack and ruin has created costs that we should never have encountered and should have been dealt with many, many years ago.

“We now have to pick up the pieces of an administration that should have long since learned the lessons of decades of poor administration and poor decision making.

“We’ve had to sort this out in a timely fashion and we will sort this out in a timely fashion.

“We are doing the best for Wakefield residents and making sue we are getting value for money.”

In July, cabinet members agreed to replace the roof and carry out repairs at Wakefield’s Grade I-listed County Hall at a costs of £14m.

Matthew Caton, cabinet member for children and young people, said: “I think when there are accusations that we are selling off the Crown Jewels, as it were, these are absolutely false.

“As a Reform council, we’ve been elected on a mandate of common sense, holding on to buildings that are of no use nor ornament doesn’t match up to that priority.

“I think the people of Wakefield are quite keen to see what assets we have maintained, and this goes towards that.

“What they are quite keen to see is buildings not left in a derelict state.”