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Government to close down council borrowing to generate income


grey_man

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From The Times
 

Ban on local council investments in risky property portfolios
Andrew Ellson, Consumer Affairs Correspondent
December 27 2017, 12:01am, 
The Times


Councils will be banned from borrowing to invest in commercial properties amid concern that they are putting taxpayers’ money and local services at risk.

The Department for Communities & Local Government (DCLG) has outlined rules that will stop councils borrowing money to fund the purchases unless they benefit local residents.

The plans, which have been published under a consultation, are likely to derail many councils’ investment plans, which can include buying shopping centres, retail parks and supermarkets. Earlier this year an investigation by The Times revealed that local authorities were making multibillion-pound bets on commercial property to replace revenue lost through government cuts.

Freedom of information requests to every council in the country found that they had paid £2.7 billion for commercial properties since 2015, up from £500 million over the previous three years. Much of the money was borrowed from the Public Works Loan Board.

Experts warned that some councils were building “exceptionally risky” portfolios with little or no investment experience, raising concerns that services would have to be cut or taxes increased if the property bubble bursts.

Now the DCLG wants to stop councils from borrowing solely to generate a rental income. The consultation document says: “Borrowing solely to invest in a yield-bearing opportunity is borrowing in advance of need.” Borrowing in advance of need is banned under local government finance regulations.

The rules will not prevent councils buying commercial property out of existing revenues or reserves but few, if any, have enough spare cash to do that.

Professional investors hailed the new rules, saying that councils’ spending sprees were driving up commercial property prices. In parts of the country local authorities make up a third of buyers. The cross-bench peer Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay, chairman of OUM Property fund managers, said: “The government has woken up to this gross abuse of public money and cracked down on councils gambling on property at long last . . . Why has it taken so long and so much forensic investigative journalism before it was stopped?”

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4 hours ago, grey_man said:

The Department for Communities & Local Government (DCLG) has outlined rules that will stop councils borrowing money to fund the purchases unless they benefit local residents.

A get out clause for any Council worth their salt and a way with words.

A retail area could be bought and the argument made that it does benefit the residents. If it is owned by the council the argument could be that they can keep it running and thus the residents will have somewhere to shop. if they don't buy it then it could close and then the residents would have to go elsewhere to shop and the space could be left derelict and be a hazard to the residents due to rats, anti-social behavior and the like.

and..............................

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2 hours ago, Evil Sid said:

A get out clause for any Council worth their salt and a way with words.

A retail area could be bought and the argument made that it does benefit the residents. If it is owned by the council the argument could be that they can keep it running and thus the residents will have somewhere to shop. if they don't buy it then it could close and then the residents would have to go elsewhere to shop and the space could be left derelict and be a hazard to the residents due to rats, anti-social behavior and the like.

and..............................

I don't think that is what this refers to.

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I think any borrowing to invest in the retail sector should be tempered with caution by any local authority finance department...as far as retail is concerned the rise of internet shopping is putting the skids under the way people shop & as the older generations cease to shop traditionally who knows where the internet boom will take us. As for commercial (industrial/office) developments most go forward towns have to be cautiously ready to up the tempo of their building projects to cater for business & housing demand. Warrington has developed successfully since being first designated a new town &  has developed too well for its road network !

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  • 2 weeks later...

Davy, I agree with you on the retail sector point in terms of investment by councils. I wonder what others think of the reported proposal for WBC to create two building operations to build at least 500 homes. The timing seems to me anyway to suggest that they may intend to build at the Slutchers Lane site which would support that number of homes IIRC. They would be walking distance from Town, Bank Quay and the bus services on Chester Road would be accessible over the new bridge that is already due to be built. 

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  • 5 weeks later...

And an update from The Times. One day it might be a big enough story for the local press. :)
 

New curbs on councils to stop multimillion-pound gambles
February 10 2018, 12:01am, 

Ministers have imposed new curbs on councils using cheap borrowed cash to stake multimillion-pound bets on the commercial property market.

Local authorities must take more care to avoid undue risk when making investment decisions under guidelines from Sajid Javid, the housing, communities and local government secretary.

Councils are also under a new obligation to ensure that relative amateurs are not staking huge bets as they chase returns to replace revenue lost through government cuts.

Councils spent almost £2.8 billion on land and building in 2016, more than double the figure for the previous year. The trend, exposed in an investigation by The Times, sparked fears that low-cost Treasury loans available to local councils are fuelling a dangerous boom.

One local authority spent £422 million in 2017 alone with the tiny Spelthorne district council in Surrey investing £10,600 for every household.

Some councils were also found to have invested in commercial property assets such as shopping centres in areas hundreds of miles away. Last year, the Tory-run Mole Valley council in Surrey spent £11.5 million on an Asda supermarket in Ystalyfera, near Swansea, despite analysts believing that out-of-town supermarkets have a bleak future because of online shopping. Investors were “amazed” at the price it paid.

Local government finance chiefs justified the investments on the grounds that ever-greater pressure to deliver services while keeping council taxes low compelled them to look for other sources of income.

MPs on the public accounts committee warned the investments were in danger of getting out of hand. Meg Hillier, its Labour chairwoman, welcomed an official review launched last year. Ms Hillier, who has warned that the boom risks echoing the collapse of Icelandic banks when councils were revealed to be over-exposed to one market, said it was overdue.

Guidance issued last week by Mr Javid compels councils to be more transparent about the risks of investments but stops short of setting limits — an idea mooted in the consultation. It also says that they should prioritise security over yield in choosing investments.

It says: “Authorities must not borrow more than or in advance of their needs purely in order to profit from the investment of the extra sums borrowed.”

It adds that where a local authority chooses to disregard this guidance, it must say why and what it is doing to manage the risk.

Critics argue the rules do not go far enough. They say it is a public policy failure to let councils borrow to speculate in commercial property but not borrow to build council homes when there is a housing crisis.

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Latest on this from The Times. Warrington is the second biggest borrower in the country. 

 

Councils put £4bn on property to save towns
Tom Knowles , Property Correspondent
April 12 2018, 12:01am, 

Local councils have spent £3.8 billion buying up office blocks, shopping centres, leisure centres and warehouses over the past five years in an attempt to protect struggling town centres.

A sharp decline in the number of private investors looking for returns by placing their money in the renovation of town centres has led local authorities to step in.

At the same time an ever-greater pressure to deliver services while keeping council taxes low has led local authorities to look for other sources of income.

However, experts have warned that many local authorities are buying up property without a broader masterplan or vision for regeneration, meaning that they are sitting on a “ticking time bomb” if the property bubble bursts. If that happened and a local council then struggled to pay back its loans, it could be forced to cut local services or increase taxes.

Figures compiled by the property consultancy Carter Jonas and Revo, which represents Britain’s £360 billion retail property industry, show that councils invested £3.8 billion in commercial property assets between 2013 and 2017. About £1.7 billion of that was spent on office space; retail accounted for nearly £1.2 billion; £600 million was spent on shopping centres and £400 million on retail parks. The remainder went into warehouses, leisure centres and mixed-use schemes.

Steve Norris, head of regeneration at Carter Jonas, said: “Since the recession the private sector has pulled away from struggling town centres and is a lot more risk-averse. That means local authorities are having to take on a lot more of the risk, by assembling sites or funding regeneration themselves.”

The research said that Spelthorne borough council in Surrey, which contains the towns of Ashford, Shepperton, Staines and Sunbury, was the biggest local authority spender, buying up £477 million of assets in its area. This is more than double its nearest rival, Warrington borough council, which spent £219.5 million; largely because Spelthorne bought BP’s International Centre for Business & Technology in Sunbury for £360 million.

The largest purchase of a retail centre was The Glass Works in Barnsley by Barnsley metropolitan borough council for £120 million, followed by The Mall in Camberley bought by Surrey Heath borough council for £86 million.

Dr Norris said that councils needed a long-term plan for the properties they bought and a vision for how they could deliver long-term benefits.

“In a lot of cases, property comes on the market and there is a knee-jerk reaction by councils to buy it, but they need to think really carefully about why they are doing that,” he said.

“This could be a ticking time bomb. The property market is cyclical, so inevitably there will be a downturn, there is also Brexit looming and we’re not sure what the impact of that will be on the property sector. And the whole retail sector is changing and struggling as retailers pull out of shopping centres rather than look to expand.”

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19 hours ago, observer said:

Think the salient point is "without a master plan";   Councils have left development to piece meal development by developers, without any overall vision of what they want to achieve.   All we've had is myopic expediency.   :ph34r:

We've got 20 years to find out how well this all works out, although it could go spectacularly belly up in the interim. 

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This is a long read, but explores the issues surrounding councils taking on huge debts to invest in property. In a nutshell - it could be OK but the timescales involved are long, the sums involved enormous and if it all goes wrong, it will do so spectacularly. 

https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2018-12-04/councils-borrow-billions-to-buy-real-estate

 

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Grey_man, If the rental income ceases the effect on services is inevitable whilst the money is diverted to paying the PWLB the contribution that the renter was paying. The risk just gets worse the more things the council buys. No one can be lucky all the time. The Stobart business shows how difficult it is to invest locally but the only justification is to improve the local economy. The Council should, just like commercial players, not invest in deals that they cannot afford to go completely wrong. Thanks for the article but I didn't add much that I haven't already seen apart from making me grateful for not living in Spelthorne. I am also peeved that the Council are bound by CIPFA rules which we cannot see and use to hold then to account even though it is clear that we cannot take their behaviour on trust.

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2 hours ago, Confused52 said:

Grey_man, If the rental income ceases the effect on services is inevitable whilst the money is diverted to paying the PWLB the contribution that the renter was paying. The risk just gets worse the more things the council buys. No one can be lucky all the time. The Stobart business shows how difficult it is to invest locally but the only justification is to improve the local economy. The Council should, just like commercial players, not invest in deals that they cannot afford to go completely wrong. Thanks for the article but I didn't add much that I haven't already seen apart from making me grateful for not living in Spelthorne. I am also peeved that the Council are bound by CIPFA rules which we cannot see and use to hold then to account even though it is clear that we cannot take their behaviour on trust.

It's tricky because I think the councils have been placed in a position where they have to do things like this. I have a degree of sympathy. What worries me in particular about Warrington is not only their habitual reluctance to be open about these things, but also the swagger they have about it all.

You get this from the council in the news, but Lynton Green's cocksure boasting about it all (as well as Redwood) on Twitter is troubling. He seems absolutely convinced that the hundreds of millions of pounds they've borrowed is guaranteed to raise income with no risk. If he was so brilliant at getting high returns with no risk on that much borrowing over a period of decades, he wouldn't be working for a council, that's for sure. I'm sure one of those banks who admit they've made no money from investments over a long period would snap him up on a huge salary. 

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  • 1 month later...
On 1/12/2019 at 1:45 PM, Bazj said:

Looks like Russ has got in quick to borrow more so the council can buy two more office buildings.... 

They might really be digging a hole for the town. I didn't see this reported in the local media - a report from Grant Thornton about the dangers of large numbers of councils at risk of financial disaster. https://www.grantthornton.co.uk/en/news-centre/a-third-of-councils-at-risk-of-financial-failure-in-the-next-decade/

Of course, to a large extent they've been put in this position by the Government but it's a real worry and I'm not reassured by the council's statements about the level of risk involved.  

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17 hours ago, P J said:

well I never, Greyman in whinge about Council investment shocker,  who could ever have guessed.  Pease, buy another record for pity's sake.  ZZZZZZ

 

The troll doesn't like being trolled. What a surprise. Called out on his BS, he tries to get back into the game with a response to a month old post. 

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