Council leaders are confident two “out of town” assets will be sold to bring in millions of pounds before the end of the financial year.

Money from sales in Southampton City Council’s asset development and disposal programme (ADDP) will be used to help fund the huge transformation programme and achieve economic stability.

Launched last year, the ADDP also aims to deliver wider benefits by retaining and developing sites.

The first disposal in the programme saw the local authority receive £12.75million by selling One Guildhall Square in the city centre to the University of Southampton.

Exceptional financial support from government, which is still awaiting final approval from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, allows the city council to use capital resources, such as asset sales, to fund revenue costs. However, this flexibility is only in place for 2024/25.

At an overview and scrutiny management committee hearing on Thursday, October 24, Conservative group leader Cllr Peter Baillie said there did not seem to be much progress on disposing of assets, adding that “the clock is ticking”.

He said: “Is there a reason for that or do you have a load at the end of the pipeline that are going to suddenly pop out?”

Labour deputy council leader and cabinet member for finance and corporate services Cllr Simon Letts said the aim for the current year was to obtain an additional £17.5million from disposals.

Cllr Letts said: “We’re focusing in on disposing of our out of town assets and there are two of those.

“I think we are in discussions and negotiations on both of them and I’m reasonably confident of those coming off our books and taking a capital receipt by the end of the year.”

The cabinet member later confirmed these assets were in Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire, respectively, with the sales expected to bring in “close to” the target for the year.

Councillors received a confidential report on the of sites in the ADDP when the initiative was approved by members earlier in the year.

Cllr Letts told the committee he shared Cllr Baillie’s concerns and that he had raised the need for urgency in the disposal programme “numerous times”.

He said: “I’m particularly interested in what I call non-productive assets.

“Pieces of council land, the old care home sites for example, which are effectively empty, causing us a cost because there is a security issue with some of them and at the same time not being brought forward to the market to make them useful and productive for our economy.

“I am pushing strongly on those sorts of sites because they don’t bring any income to the council, in fact they are a negative on our books and I would like to see a firm programme that disposes of there is probably a dozen that we could go through.”

Cllr Letts added: “I think officers took the decision that the easy ones to get rid of are ones that you can say this is a commercial asset, it has got a value, we should get rid of that first because it is easy.

“I don’t want to do the easy ones. I want to do the ones that are best for the city and so me and Cllr (Sarah) Bogle together are pushing strongly on some of those sites to come forward.”

Cllr Baillie gave the example of the White’s Road car park in Bitterne, which was next to land being redeveloped for housing.

He said officers needed to be more proactive, suggesting the developer would have “snapped their hand off” for the car park.

Cllr Letts agreed with the Conservative member and confirmed the site was on the list in the ADDP.