Ashford Borough Council is planning to form property investment consortia with other councils to maximise the lot size and quality of what it is able to buy.
The Kent council is also aiming to generate profit from providing property management skills to other councils and it already has a separate lettings agency.
In the past year many local councils have starting investing into property to try to make up shortfalls in their budgets, fuelled by cheap, long-term financing from the Public Works Loans Board. Most notably, Spelthorne council bought BP’s Sundbury campus for £360m last year.
Ashford presently owns only property in its own borough, but it is looking to expand further afield.
Chief executive Tracey Kerly (pictured) said: “We haven’t yet bought outside the borough, but that’s not to say that we won’t. We want to exploit local opportunities to drive income streams before going outside. However, there will come a point when we need to drive returns, and that will mean investing elsewhere. We can’t keep council tax down without those extra income streams.
“Buying commercial property as part of a consortium is exactly the kind of thing we’d like to do. We can roll out the skills we have to share with other councils, and buying with other councils reduces our risk and means we can afford a better class of out-of-area asset.”
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