Hundreds of homes designed to be part of an athletes’ village for the Birmingham Commonwealth Games will be sold by the council at a loss of about £320m.
The new-build Perry Barr estate was not completed in time for the Games in 2022, so athletes were housed in student accommodation.
Birmingham City Council agreed last week to sell 755 of the apartments, which have been vacant for months, to a private bidder.
Officers recommended the sale as the council’s best option but acknowledged it would result in a ‘significant loss to the public purse’.
The council, which issued a section 114 notice last year, spent £325m on the development, of which £292m was borrowed.
A cabinet report says £142m-£152m of debt will remain after the sale, which will take between £8m and £9m a year over 40 years to repay.
This puts the projected total loss upwards of £320m.
The report to cabinet says: ‘This will be an additional pressure to the already strained financial position of the council, and compensating savings will need to be made elsewhere in the council’s budgets.’
Birmingham will retain 213 of the Perry Barr apartments to be used as council housing.
Government commissioners at the cash-strapped council said a ‘full lessons learned analysis’ of the housing project was essential.
They said: ‘These blocks, which provide much-needed new homes, have stood empty for far too long, during which time the council has incurred costs of heating and securing them without using a scarce asset.’
