Slough Borough Council’s former headquarters was mistakenly listed as for sale online, the council has said.

St Martins Place on Bath Road appeared for sale online earlier this week. It was described as ‘an excellent development or conversion opportunity’ in a listing on the Houses For Sale To Rent search engine. This was visible on Tuesday, June 25, but has since been removed.

The council says the former HQ ‘isn’t for sale right now’ and was apparently published by mistake by its property agents.

Slough Borough Council left St Martins Place in 2019 to move into its current headquarters on Windsor Road. Council leaders said in February 2021 that they hoped the building could be turned into 64 flats, all of them marketed as affordable homes.

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But the accidental appearance of the advert indicates the troubled council may seek to sell it off as part of a plan to pay off its debts after effectively going bankrupt in July that year.

The advert said: “St Martins Place represents an excellent development or conversion opportunity to deliver a significant residential or alternative use scheme.

“The property was the former headquarters of Slough Borough Council and has been vacant since the Slough Borough Council relocated to Observatory House in 2019.”

It adds that the offices are ‘conveniently’ close to Slough Train Station and town centre and that it ‘benefits from excellent transport links'.

A council spokesperson confirmed that St Martins Place is on the list of assets that could be sold off but that it is not currently for sale.

The spokesperson said: “St Martins place isn’t for sale right now. We have a strong and active programme to bring surplus assets to the market but on this occasion the advert was not part of a marketing initiative and has been removed.

“We apologise for any confusion this may have caused.” They added that the error seemed to have been made by the property agent that the council is working with on its asset sales programme.

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Slough Borough Council hopes to raise some £600 million from asset sales – which it hoped to have achieved by March 2027.

However a recent report on the council’s budget for last year says this is now ‘unrealistic’ as some sales have been delayed.

At a meeting of council leaders  on June 17 councillor Wal Chahal – who is responsible for finance – said the borough couldn’t sell all of its assets at once.

He said: “We can’t market all of them at the same time because we’ll have a fire sale – we wouldn’t get the value we need for these.”

But he added: “We’ve got to sell a significant amount of our assets to pay off the debt profile that we have otherwise we will be sinking under the debt.”