The MYSTERY remains over the assets the BCP council is seeking to sell as the local authority seeks to balance its budget.
The local authority is moving forward with plans to fill a £20m gap in the current financial year by selling ‘non-strategic historic assets’.
The nature of these assets remains a mystery and, as noted, will not be disclosed due to “commercial sensitivity”.
The mystery assets are described as “performing quite well in this environment,” giving BCP Council chief Drew Mellor “real confidence” that now is the time to sell.
Read more: Council officers cannot guarantee that the assets will be sold in time
Speaking at the cabinet meeting on Wednesday November 23, Cllr Mellor said: “We are considering either divesting some non-strategic assets or using the Government’s capitalization system.
“The other thing we inherited was quite a diverse range of assets that we are looking to divest.
“We’ve looked at them and we think a lot of these assets are actually very strategic or very important to the communities or to our regeneration program.
“The assets we have in our confidential annex are now historical, non-strategic assets that are investments for yield.
Read more: BCP Council chief defends plan to sell income-generating assets
“The government is quite clear that they don’t want us to move towards more investment returns, so they would balance our portfolio by transferring some of these assets.
“By doing this we can retain our strategic assets that our community finds so important and for regeneration purposes as well.
“If you look at the detail of the assets that we’ve highlighted, they’re in areas that are performing quite well in this environment – I won’t go into more detail than that, but it gives us real confidence that it’s is a good time to look to get rid of these assets.
The Daily Echo has previously asked what these assets are, but the advice remains tight-lipped.
The assets would likely enter the public domain when marketed and/or any sale above £500,000, which would require full board approval.
A report from CFO Adam Richens said the assets must be sold by the end of March 2023, as it will be “critical if the board is to avoid relying on ‘capital conscious’ management.”
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