Star comment: Selling off council assets is lamentable

You've got a tight budget. There are things you could sell. Welcome to the local government world of Flog It! where you can cash in your treasures and spend it on luxuries like street-sweeping and fixing potholes.

That really is what we are coming to with Shropshire Council saying it cant rule out selling its assets in an attempt to balance the books.

This is a council which has been seeking to slough off various services it has traditionally undertaken, shifting the cost and responsibility onto local communities and volunteer groups by urging them to take them on instead, failing which those services risk being lost.

Now council leader Malcolm Pate says the council is looking at the future of all its assets.

You can already go on the council's website and see land and property which is available for sale or for rent. There's the former youth club and grounds at Station Road, Much Wenlock, for example, a snip with a guide price of £80,000. Or The Hollies, the former county training offices in Sutton Road, Shrewsbury. It's an attractive 19th century building with a guide price which may or may not be attractive at £1 million. The former Stone House council offices in Ludlow which have been on the website for more than two years are under offer. These are just examples.

There are different ways you can look at these sales. The definition of an asset is anything valuable or useful. But if you have something that you are no longer using and will never use again – and if there are council offices which are now empty, they are not truly an asset any longer – you might as well get rid of them as they are an unnecessary burden.

There again, once they're gone, they're gone.

The picture is one of the council slowly but surely retreating into a Shirehall bunker. As it happens the Shirehall must be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, assets the council has.

If Shropshire Council is to adopt a policy of sell-off and retreat, it will gradually disappear before council taxpayers' eyes and they will wonder why, when the council is doing less and owns less, they are not paying less in their council tax to reflect the reduction in council-provided services.