The first completed sale of one of Slough Borough Council’s assets has been announced with more coming soon.
The building, a Euroway warehouse in Bradford, has fetched £14.48 million and sales of further out-of-borough assets are expected to be announced soon including a Wickes hardware store in Wolverhampton and the Odeon cinema in Basingstoke.
The sales have been forced by Government intervention after the council was effectively declared bankrupt last year. Avison Young has drawn up a disposal programme.
Cllr Rob Anderson, lead member for financial oversight and council assets, said: “This first sale is a milestone in our programme to divest the council of surplus property assets, to reduce our borrowing and bring the council back to a stable financial footing.
“Cabinet agreed a package of the council’s out-of-borough investment properties were sold first, as these are surplus to our operational requirements, don’t have significance to local people in the way some of our assets in the town do, and aren’t always producing strong rental income anymore, given recent changes in the economic landscape.
“I am delighted this first sale has completed, with the other sales we are transacting, as these support the council’s financial recovery by producing significant capital receipts and reducing our borrowing and debt charges.”
Image (Google) shows the council’s head offices.
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How typical of a disgraced Council headed by the appropriately named Chief Executive, Cllr Swindlehurst, to seek to take credit for the deals they have struck on the sale of key assets they’ve been forced to sell to get themselves out of the financial disaster they created by believing they were property investor/developers rather than simply a Council who’s principle role is to provide services to their local residents. Swindlehurst should have been banished to the jungle along with Matt Hancock or dispatched to Glasgow, together with Stephen Gibson, the former head of property, who was another of the principle architects of the Council’s financial downfall.