Cornwall Council’s deputy leader has denied the decentralisation of 2,000 land assets owned by the local authority is a “fire sale”.

The council has agreed to either sell or gift beaches, parks, car parks, green spaces, playing fields, chapels and other property in a bid to make millions of pounds worth of budget savings.

At a meeting of the council’s Conservative Cabinet on May 8, deputy leader and head of resources Cllr David Harris denied the authority was “dumping off assets to any Tom, Dick or Harry at any price to make a quick buck. We are, over a number of years, going to be looking at a whole range of assets that in one way, shape or form don’t really fit as council assets”.

He said up to £6.9-million of new savings had been made by the cash-strapped council, which included the decentralisation of the land assets, a list of which has not yet been publicly revealed. The council ended the 2023/24 financial year on March 31 with an overspend of just over £3-million against a net budget of £707.667-million.

The net revenue budget for the forthcoming year now stands at £770.857-million, with a draw from council reserves of £11.4-million.

Cllr Harris stressed the savings made by losing the 2,000 assets was not a “fire sale”. He added: “In the end these might be passed on to town or parish councils, community groups or transferred to one of our arm’s length companies. Whatever might make most sense.”

Council leader Cllr Linda Taylor pointed out this had already started with the “sale” of Pendennis headland to the people of Falmouth for £1 last year.

Falmouth Labour councillor Jayne Kirkham was quick to respond to this: “The reason that that transfer ever came up was that GLL wanted to vary the contract [of the Ships and Castles leisure centre], Cornwall Council agreed and our swimming pool was shut. There was an outcry in the town about the possibility of that land being sold off, which is why Falmouth Town Council took it over.”

She added: “There were devolution packages agreed with town councils a number of years ago and lately some of them have been told that they would have to pay money for those parcels of land as opposed to them being simply devolved, which we thought was the agreement initially. Is that going to happen more and what are the plans for the car parks? We were told there was a list of 2,000 assets…”

At this point she was cut off by Cllr Taylor who said Cllr Kirkham had swayed from the path of her point about Pendennis headland. She said she would give Cllr Kirkham a written response to what was agreed “years ago”. Cllr Harris responded by saying “We are taking a slow and steady approach to this.”

Cllr Kirkham pushed her point about whether the land assets would be sold or not: “It does appear that the approach has changed from parcels of land simply being devolved to looking at market value and selling them.”

“It is horses for courses,” replied Cllr Harris. “Some of these will have a value and we have a duty to get best value. Best value can include community value. So some assets will be sold for the best value we can get, other ones will make absolute sense to do nothing with at all, while others will be devolved to a local community group or council at minimal cost.”

He added: “I will say it again, it’s not a fire sale or dumping stuff off anyway you can.”