Slough Borough Council is ‘selling off the family silver,’ a leading councillor has said – as he and colleagues agreed that another building should be earmarked for sale.

Leading councillors on the asset sales committee agreed that the Langley Resource Centre – a vacant daycare centre on Spitfire Road – should be declared ‘surplus’ and available for sale. This is part of the bankrupt council’s efforts to cover its debts and get back on stable footing.

But two councillors on the committee suggested that the value that council officers said the building had - £300,000 – seemed ‘quite low’. They also asked whether the council could make use of the building itself.

Councillor Puja Bedi said: “The valuation seems quite low and I’m guessing if we go to auction we’ll bring back more than that anyway.”

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She suggested that council education and children’s services – which she is responsible for – might be able to make use of the building.

Councillor Gurcharan Manku said he agreed ‘we have to’ sell off properties. But he said: “We are selling the family silver.”

He asked whether the site could be used to help provide temporary accommodation for families facing homelessness. The council is facing both an increase in the number of families it has had to accommodate, and struggling to pay for the rising costs.

But council officers said they’d asked all departments whether they were interested in using the site before deciding that it should be declared ‘surplus’ to the council’s needs.

A council officer said:  “We have engaged with services before bringing it forward and this is not one of those assets which any of our services have said ‘actually there is an alternative use’.”

The officers added that the building had been out of use since 2020, and that the council spends around £10,000 a year just to keep it.

Council leader Dexter Smith said: “The fact of the matter is it’s been out of use for four years and no one has come forward to say we want to use it.”

And councillor Wal Chahal - responsible for finance – said the council had to stop what he called the ‘incompetence’ of previous leaderships’ spending on empty property.

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He said: “That incompetence is what we’re trying to get past and we’re trying to bring this council back onto an even keel.”

Slough Borough Council had hoped to raise £600 million from asset sales after going effectively bankrupt in 2021. At one point it had hoped that it could raise £400 million of this by March this year, and the other £200 million after that.

But the council had raised just £223.5 million this year and has now declared its target of £600 million is ‘unrealistic’.

Councillors on the asset sales committee agreed that the building should be classed as ‘surplus and earmarked for sale’. They will recommend that their colleagues on the leading cabinet committee approve this at a meeting on Monday October 21.