A property sell-off by Slough Borough Council is now expected to raise just £214 million by 2027 – far less than the once-hoped for £600 million.

The council launched a programme to sell off a raft of properties in 2022 having gone effectively bankrupt the year before. At one point the council thought it could raise between £400 and £600 million from the sales.

But new council plans now say this was ‘optimistic’ and have been affected by falling property values. And they say staff turnover during 2022 meant incorrect analyses ‘likely took place’ and may have contributed.

The plans say when the property sales programme began in 2022, it had presumed that prices would continue to rise.

It said: “In coming to this target, an optimistic approach was taken, both to what could be achieved by way of development on each asset, as well as market and economic conditions at the time and the expectation that the market would remain stable and prices would likely continue to increase.”

But the property sales didn’t raise as much money as hoped, and council staffed announced in September this year that the original target was ‘unrealistic.

Now a new reassessment of the council’s properties have found that if some of them were sold, their fall in value mean the council would make a loss if they were sold.

Council leaders on an asset disposals committee are set to discuss the updated property sales strategy at a meeting on Thursday, November 14.