Bucks Council to sell offices to fund £300m spending plans

Buckinghamshire Council is selling off its offices to help fund a £300 million spending programme, which includes buying new vehicles and building a school.

The council will sell its offices at King George V House, King George V Rd, Amersham, which are only at 16 per cent capacity and were rumoured to be earmarked for flats.

It is hoped that the sale, which Cabinet approved last week, will contribute towards the council’s target of a £6m capital receipt.

Capital receipts are the money councils make from asset sales and can be spent on new long-term assets such as buildings, vehicles and equipment.

The council will now seek offers for the freehold of King George V House, which saw the number of staff using it plummet during the pandemic as people worked from home instead.

Council Leader Martin Tett said the local unitary authority’s sale of the offices would help fund its capital programme for 2024/25, which is still being drawn up as part of the budget.

He said: “If we sold a building – and we are going to – we are looking at selling the old Chiltern District Council offices in Amersham – if we got a capital receipt for that, we would use that to fund our own capital programme.

“We are looking to spend £300 million on capital items this year coming on everything from new vehicles to a new school. [The capital receipt] would help to build a school.”

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, the council boss said the council was also looking to dispose of other major assets.

Among the targets is the County Hall building – or Walton Street Tower – in Aylesbury, the council’s imposing high-rise office building, which is only partially occupied.

Cllr Tett said: “We are looking to rationalise down as far as possible some of the buildings that we have had. The Chiltern one is the first significant disposal of an ex-council building.

“We are looking very closely at what we are going to do with the old county council buildings in Aylesbury, the tower block.

“We are looking at what we can do with that, but that is part of an overall discussion on town centre regeneration.”

The council chief added: “There is a constant stream of bits of land that we are selling, the surplus Chilterns offices, there is some land down in Denham. There are bits and pieces all over the place that we are trying to sell off.”

Cllr Tett told a meeting of the Cabinet last week that it was the policy of the council to dispose of surplus assets.

Some £170m was earmarked for capital expenditure in the budget for the current 2023/24 financial year.

Cllr Tett refused to comment further on the £300m figure he quoted for the council’s 2024/25 capital programme, which will not be finalised until February.

In a follow-up statement, he said money made from the sale of council assets would be reinvested in council services such as regeneration initiatives and affordable housing.

He added: “For commercial reasons, we cannot discuss the value of individual sites. We are also unable to comment on sites where commercial negotiations are ongoing.”