Dear readers, since Birmingham went bankrupt in 2023, 1,000 of the city’s publicly-owned assets have gone under the hammer. The most lucrative sales have been land — like the former Birmingham Wheels site which is set to be transformed into the city’s new Sports Quarter. But also included in the on-going sales are spaces like parks that children play in, and community centres where people meet every day. Even worse, much of it is being sold at cut-price rates in a desperate attempt to balance Birmingham City Council’s books.
In today’s story, The Dispatch gives you the full picture of the big sell-off for the first time. We used freedom of information requests to find out exactly what the council has cashed in — and how much money it has managed to save. Plot spoiler: it’s still £500m off the target set by commissioners. Matty Edwards has the full story for you below, including an interactive map of the city so you can see the value of what has been sold off in your area.
But before that, your Brum in Brief.
Brum in Brief
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Today, we reveal the public land sold off in Birmingham since the city announced it was bankrupt - and what could be next to go.
Two years ago, government-appointed commissioners ordered the fire sale of hundreds-of-millions of Birmingham City Council’s assets to keep its budgets afloat. Ever since the council went bust, its land and buildings have been sold off at breakneck speed — with little scrutiny.
And now, with time running out for the council to meet its eye-watering targets, fresh concerns are emerging surrounding botched community takeovers of youth centres and green spaces being chopped up into parcels and flogged off.
For the first time, we can see the full picture of the council’s asset sale programme. Data acquired by The Dispatch under freedom of information laws lays bare which assets have been sold since the council went bankrupt in September 2023. Over the last two years, a whopping 1,000 assets have been flogged for a total of nearly £230m.
The vast majority of these sales were homes. However, the most lucrative asset for the council is land, which generated nearly half of the total value. More than 800 homes have been sold by the council as part of its effort to get rid of assets. However, these properties are not part of the council housing stock — instead, they fall into other categories, including accommodation for council staff.
Read on our website to see the full, interactive map.
The three biggest sales between September 2023 and September 2025 include: Bordesley Park (£50m) bought by Birmingham City FC, for which the council had received an offer of £30m more two years earlier; a 114-acre chunk of the Peddimore Estate in Sutton for £48m, acquired by insulation giant Rockwool, who plan to build a manufacturing facility; and a purpose-built office building on Woodcock Street in central Birmingham sold to Aston University for £25m.
Despite these huge sales, the council is still about £500m short of the target set by the commissioners for March 2026. The council, which will also need to potentially find another £250m the following year (2027) to balance the books, said this September that it was “expediting the pace” of disposals after falling behind schedule.
‘Short-sighted, unjustified’
Conservative councillor Robert Alden, who sits on the committee tasked with scrutinising which assets to dispose of, described the council’s approach as short-sighted.
“I think what's most concerning is making sure the things that are sold aren't the things that are going to be needed in the future,” he tells The Dispatch.
“It's one thing disposing of a family house or an industrial estate that the council doesn't need anymore, but when we start talking about park land, green spaces or libraries, these are assets that are never going to get replaced and you end up hurting the city in the long run,” he tells me.
Alden adds that the council’s capital receipts from asset sales have, so far, only covered last year’s budget deficit. If this is the case, then more asset sales will be required to cover the growing cost of equal pay liabilities.
"Until the council sorts out its financial mess,” Alden says, “the likelihood is that [the authority] will have to continue disposing of assets. [This is] only a short term solution, you no longer get the income from [sold assets], and you can't sell [them] a second time.” However, the commissioners, who were appointed under the previous Conservative government, seem intent on pushing ahead with the asset sales programme.
Dr James Brackley, an accounting expert at the University of Glasgow, who recently called for a public inquiry into the council’s decision to declare bankruptcy, says the asset sales are “entirely unjustified” and appear to be “delivering really poor value for money.” Last week, the commissioners released a statement, dismissing Brackley’s analysis that the council’s financial health wasn’t as bad as senior officers made out in 2023 as “entirely incorrect”.
