South Tyneside Independents» South Tyneside Council

Another white elephant?

The town hall is full of talk about the new BT Office development on Harton Staithes and it seems that not everybody is convinced that South Tyneside Council should be turning property developer and borrowing £15 million to do it!

A recent report by the Audit Commission says local councils are unsuccessfully managing the value of their property assets – no shit Sherlock!

The report, entitled ‘Room for Improvement’ revealed that councils in England have property including offices, libraries, schools and leisure centres valued collectively at £250bn, that’s nearly double the book value of a decade ago.

Since 2000, when The Audit Commission last released a report on the local authorities’ properties, councils have spent £1.2bn more buying or refurbishing their offices than they have made through property sales.

In the year 2007/08 alone, councils made a net capital investment in property of over £10bn.

The report stated that one third of councils do not yet share offices or facilities with other local public bodies.

In the report, The Audit Commission called upon local authorities to take a more strategic approach to asset management in order to secure better value for taxpayers money.

It urged councils to dispose of property assets, to change their use, to reorganise them or share them.

It also recommended councils collect data on size, use, occupancy, condition and running costs, and to keep up-to-date about the open market values and potential alternative uses of the assets they own.

Here in South Tyneside the local council has a healthy property portfolio and is continually trying to sell off bits of it in an effort to balance it’s books. It also helps keep the community charge artificially low!

This year alone the council was hoping to raise around £5 million from the sale of it’s assets but due to the current economic climate the revised estimate is around £2 million.

Despite the Audit Commission’s criticism, many council’s still continue to speculate on property and insist on becoming amateur property developers with someone elses money.

Perhaps this explains why South Tyneside Council is obsessed with office developments despite the fact that the borough is a wash with unused office space.

We think it would make more sense to fill some of the borough’s empty office developments before encouraging the building of yet more ‘white elephants’.