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Councillor Janet Grauberg - says the council may need to find the funds |
The big sell-off hits £30m, with more to come
Town Hall defends lucrative property deals
COUNCIL-owned homes and commercial properties have been sold at an unprecedented rate, bringing in £30 million, under the Lib Dem-Conservative administration, documents obtained by the New Journal reveal.
Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act show that £21 million worth of the council’s portfolio of houses, commercial properties and plots of land were sold between May 2006 and last month, some on the open market and some in behind-closed-doors deals with special purchasers.
A further £8.5 million has flooded into the coffers since May, including the finalised sales – after High Court battles – of the Stanley buildings in King’s Cross for £3 million and the former Jamestown Day Centre in Swiss Cottage for £1.9 million, bringing the total close to £30 million.
These are all “disposals” made to raise revenue, rather than homes sold under right-to-buy, which the council is powerless to prevent.
The deluge of cash is three times what was projected in the published capital programme, and crams into 13 months the level of capital gains that previous administrations have normally made in 30 months.
The council’s Lib Dem finance chief, Councillor Janet Grauberg, said funding capital projects like the £25 million restoration of Kentish Town baths forced the council to sell where the law – and political considerations – allowed.
She added: “If the government doesn’t come up with the money for investment then we need to find it. We’ve set out an ambitious capital programme and we need to fund that, including by capital receipts, so sales will continue.
“But decisions are taken on a case-by-case basis. All these disposals relate to buildings where the council no longer has a use for them or where the best interests of the council are to sell rather than retain the property.”
Although only two campaigns against individual sales have gone as far as the High Court, there have been vociferous opponents of other deals.
Businessman Saad Saraf, whose firm Media Reach Enterprises rents a unit at James Cameron House in Castlehaven Road, Camden Town, unsuccessfully opposed its sale, agreed under Labour but finalised for £5 million in May.
He described the sale as “a betrayal of small businesses”.
Others have objected to the loss of nine houses and flats when there are 16,000 people on Camden’s housing list.
But the overall policy of selling parts of Camden’s massive property portfolio has produced little protest, least of all from the Labour opposition which authorised a number of the sales from which the Lib Dem-Conservative coalition has benefited.
John Mills, former Labour finance chief and the architect of much of the council’s property empire, snapped up during the 1970s and 1980s when prices were at rock bottom, said: “It makes a certain amount of sense to do this now, with the government taking the view that it does about investment.
“Property values in Camden are incredibly high.” |
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