SIXTY sites in Swindon have been sold or given away by the borough council in the last five years – raising more than £20 million.

And more than £1m of that has been spent on redundancy payments, while more than £3.5m has been spent on transformation measures at the civic offices - normally meaning restructuring and efficiency savings.

Research by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism shows the 60 different sites sold between 2014 and 2018 raised £20,771,759 – with some, like the former Headlands School site, bringing in more than £6.5m and others, such as open spaces next to houses in residential streets, going for just over £1,000.

Nearly 30 of the transactions listed by BIJ are the transfer of allotment sites to the ownership of parish councils in the borough with no money changing hands.

Sales included £4.4m for the car parks in North Star Avenue and Sheppard Street, £4m for selling the central bus depot as a going concern, £2.5m for the Even Swindon Primary School site in Rodbourne and £1m for the North Rodbourne allotment site.

A spokesman for the council said: “When council-owned assets are no longer in use, the sensible thing to do, and which is in line with government recommendations, is to sell them to support future investment. This also has the added benefit of ensuring derelict or surplus sites are brought back into use.

“The assets sold by the council since 2014 include those such as the former Headlands School in Upper Stratton, which turned a redundant site into a new housing community. Likewise, the £4m sale of Thamesdown Transport’s Barnfield bus depot was necessary to ensure the company could continue to operate.

“Through the £1.1m that has been spent funding staff redundancies, the council will save £1.5m by the end of this year. It is important to note that, over the previous couple of years, the council has been tasked with having to make £30m of savings by 2020. This is against a backdrop of reduced government funding and an increase in demand for statutory services.

“For further context, council investment in infrastructure over the next five years is estimated to be in excess of £200m.”

Councils around the country have been selling off land: Oxford City Council’s sales of 26 items raised £30m, dwarfing Swindon’s. Bristol got rid of 86 items for around the same amount of money. Wiltshire Council raised a huge £31m selling more than 80 sites.

A paper submitted to cabinet in June last year said that £1.12m of capital receipts was spent on ‘headcount reduction’ in 2017-18 leading to a saving of £1.46m in the two years following.

£1.78m was also spent on a redesign of adult services with an expected saving over to years by the end of this month of £2.2m.

The Unison union branch secretary at Euclid Street Karla Bradford said: “Any redundancy for our members is a tragedy, and we don’t want to see any of them – but the responsibility for this must be laid at the door of central government which has cut the borough council’s funding so severely.”