VALUABLE items from Southampton’s £150m art collection could be sold off to help fund city improvements, the Daily Echo can reveal.

That’s the aim of city leader Simon Letts in a radical departure from previous Labour bosses who said legal red tape prevented a sell- off.

Cllr Letts made the revelation after Croydon Council announced plans to sell off £13m worth of publically-owned works.

He has now said he will be getting in contact with the London authority to see if he could learn anything from their plans.

Under previous leader Richard Williams Labour chiefs had refused to consider the sale of items from the largely-unseen, 3,700-piece city collection, saying they were legally unable to sell the artwork.

But new city leader Cllr Letts says he will actively investigate selling some items to help fund work on the city’s cultural quarter, which would free up vital funds for cut-threatened services.

It comes after the Daily Echo launched the Show Us The Monet campaign in 2009 to make the best use of money locked up in the city’s art collection, much of which is stored in vaults where it cannot be viewed by the public.

The council is set to spend £6.7m to fund the proposed arts complex in Northern Above Bar, that will contain a theatre, art gallery, dance studio and other facilities.

With council chiefs looking likely to make £20m of cuts in their next budget, any money that could be re-allocated from the arts complex scheme would be welcomed by departmental bosses, who will soon be forced to wield the axe again.

It is believed two items earmarked for sale by the council’s Conservative previous administration – Auguste Rodin’s Crouching Woman and Sir Alfred Munning’s After The Race – could net the authority £8m.

Cllr Letts said: “I’ll be making contact with Croydon to find out whether their situation is the same as ours.

“If there is a mechanism to free up some investment for our cultural quarter or the art gallery [through the sale of artwork] then I will look at it.”

Conservative-run Croydon Council wants to sell 24 items from its 230-piece collection, including ancient Chinese ceramics and porcelain from the Ming dynasty, some of which is 10,000 years old.

Croydon council bosses say the sale has been backed by the relatives of Raymond Riesco, who bequeathed the collection to the council in 1959, and would be invested in the £27m refurbishment of the Fairfield Halls arts centre.

Southampton City Council Conservative group leader Royston Smith has reiterated his party’s calls to sell off some of the city collection.

He said: “Croydon are not the first council to sell art from their collection and I’ve no doubt they won’t be the last.

“Southampton’s Labour council is hiding behind a fictitious law rather than come clean and concede that they have members who are so fundamentally opposed that they will use any excuse not to rationalise the collection.

“It’s time for them to come clean and admit that the law has nothing to do with their refusal to use our assets to drive Southampton’s economy forward.”

Stephen Foster, chairman of the Chipperfield Trust advisory committee, which was set up to oversee Southampton’s art collection, refused to comment on the latest development.