Public Land Sold by Your Council

As a result of the government's austerity programme councils in the UK are being forced into selling off publicly owned land and property. Local amenities such as libraries, community centres and playgrounds have been closed and sold across the country. Around a third of the money that has been raised from this national asset stripping has been spent on redundancy payments.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has worked with the Huffington Post to investigate the 12,000 plus public spaces that have been sold off by councils since 2014/15. You can find out what public spaces have been sold by your local council on the Bureau's map Sold From Under You. If you enter your council's name or your postcode into the Bureau's interactive tool you can view a map of the public spaces sold off by your local council. The map sidebar also lists the spaces sold, the amount of money each was sold for and the total amount of money raised by the council from selling off local public spaces.

You can read more about the investigation in the Bureau's report Revealed: The thousands of public spaces lost to the council funding crisis. You can also read more about the investigation in the Huffington Post's story Has Your Local Council Been Selling Off Public Spaces.