Kent County Council says it has already raised more than £84m from surplus-property disposals since 2021/22. Now the Reform UK-run authority is lining up a further £49m, taking the past-and-planned programme to more than £133m.
Kent County Council’s family silver cupboard is open again.
Not the actual silver, obviously. Not the ceremonial spoons, the portraits of long-forgotten aldermen, or the municipal teapots gathering dust somewhere in County Hall. We mean the valuable stuff: land, buildings, freeholds, offices, depots and public sites that have sat in Kent’s ownership for years, sometimes decades, until someone decides they’re “surplus”.
And once a public asset is called surplus, it’s already halfway to the auction room.
On KCC’s own figures, the previous Conservative-run authority raised more than £57m from surplus-property disposals between 2021/22 and 2024/25. That was hardly small beer. It was a four-year sale programme under a council already wrestling with debt, rising demand, adult social care pressure, children’s services costs, SEND spending and the long shadow of austerity.
Then came May 2025. Reform UK took control of Kent County Council after the local elections, turning one of England’s biggest county councils into a political prize.
Since then, KCC has reported £27m of disposal receipts for 2025/26. Its forward programme now anticipates a further £49m between 2026/27 and 2028/29.
Add that together and the Reform-era actual-plus-forecast figure, if the pipeline is delivered, comes to £76m.
The political arithmetic is simple enough. The Conservatives’ four-year period produced more than £57m from surplus-property disposals. The Reform period has £27m reported already, plus £49m planned. That gives a projected £76m.
In other words, Reform’s past-and-planned KCC sell-off is on course to exceed the previous four-year Conservative total.
That matters because KCC is not a small parish council selling off a rusty lawnmower and a broken gazebo. It’s one of the largest local authorities in the country. It says it holds more than 16,000 property and land assets. That is a vast public estate built up over generations, often for public-service reasons that don’t fit neatly into a spreadsheet cell.
Some disposals will be sensible. Nobody serious argues that a council should keep every redundant strip of land, empty building, former depot, awkward garage plot or unusable corner of a site forever. Public bodies should manage their estates properly. They should cut waste. They should not pour scarce money into assets that no longer serve a public purpose.
But that isn’t the whole story.
Public land is not just a line in the capital programme. Once sold, it is usually gone. It can’t easily be reassembled when a future community needs a school site, a care facility, a bus depot, a library, affordable housing land, a children’s centre, a local office, a public building, or simply some democratic leverage over what happens next.
This is why the phrase “surplus asset” deserves a raised eyebrow.
Surplus to what?
Surplus to today’s service plan? Surplus to tomorrow’s housing need? Surplus to a council trying to balance its books before the next budget round? Surplus to the public — or merely surplus to the spreadsheet?
KCC’s own programme makes clear that there can be a gap between when an asset is sold and when the receipt arrives. A sale may be agreed in one financial year, while the money lands in another. Receipts can be delayed because a sale is conditional on planning, finance, market performance, legal timing or other factors.
That caveat matters.
A receipt arriving in 2025/26 may relate to an asset declared surplus, marketed, negotiated or legally progressed before Reform took control in May 2025. Likewise, some of the future £49m may sit in a pipeline that began life under the Conservatives. So this cannot honestly be written as “Reform caused every sale” unless the asset-level history proves it.
But it can fairly be written as this: during the Conservative-run KCC period from 2021/22 to 2024/25, the council raised more than £57m from surplus-property disposals. Since Reform took control, KCC has reported £27m of disposal receipts for 2025/26 and is forecasting a further £49m by 2028/29. If delivered, the Reform-era disposal programme will reach £76m — higher than the previous four-year Conservative total.
That is not a minor difference. It is the difference between routine estate management and turning disposals into a major financial lever.
The real public-interest question is not whether every sale is wrong. It is whether residents can see enough to know which sales are sensible, which are desperate, which are strategic, and which might one day be regretted.
That is where KCC’s reporting becomes awkward.
The council publishes the big totals. It tells residents about the receipts. It says the freehold disposal programme is intended to support its financial strategy, capital programme and fiduciary duty to taxpayers. But the detailed programme — the asset-level list showing what is actually in the pipeline — has been placed in exempt appendices.
That means the public gets the headline number, but not the full map.
We can see the price of the cupboard being emptied. We can’t yet see everything being taken off the shelves.
And that is not good enough.
If KCC is planning a public-property disposal programme worth tens of millions of pounds, residents should be able to understand the broad shape of what is being sold. They should know whether the list is mostly genuine deadweight, or whether it includes land and buildings that might have wider public, community, housing, environmental or strategic value.
There are legitimate reasons why some commercial details may need temporary confidentiality. Nobody is suggesting KCC should sabotage its own negotiating position by publishing live reserve prices, bidders’ names or sensitive terms halfway through a sale.
But secrecy must not become the default wrapper for public land. “Commercial confidentiality” cannot be allowed to do all the heavy lifting. The public estate belongs, ultimately, to the public. A county-wide sale programme should be scrutinised with more than a headline receipt target and a polite invitation to trust the process.
This is especially important because Reform UK won power in Kent promising a different kind of politics: sharper scrutiny, less waste, more openness, and a challenge to the old way of doing things.
Yet on the asset-sales numbers, the new broom is not just sweeping.
It’s putting the furniture on eBay.
Perhaps some of it needs to go. Perhaps some of it should have gone years ago. Perhaps some sales will reduce costs, avoid borrowing, or fund necessary capital works.
But the public is entitled to ask harder questions before the auctioneer’s hammer falls.
What exactly is being sold? Who decided it was surplus? When was that decision made? Was the asset assessed for community use, housing need, public-service need, biodiversity, heritage, future school places or local regeneration? Was there an independent valuation? Was there consultation? Was the local member told? Was the public told? Are there clawback or overage provisions if a buyer later secures a large uplift through planning?
And if residents cannot see the detailed list, how exactly are they meant to know whether Kent is managing its estate wisely — or simply flogging off the inheritance?
Because once public land is gone, it does not come back because a future council wishes it had kept it.
Kent has already seen more than £84m raised from surplus-property disposals since 2021/22. The current and planned programme points to more than £133m when the forward pipeline is included.
That is not just estate management.
It is a story about public wealth, political control, financial pressure and the slow transfer of land out of public hands.
The family silver was already being sold under the Conservatives. Under Reform, the sale looks set to continue at pace.
And whether it was blue hands or turquoise hands on the tiller, the question for Kent residents is the same: if the family silver is being sold, who gets to see the inventory before it leaves the house?
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