Council considers sales of hotels and farms

Dorset Council owns 65 hotels and guest houses

A council is considering the sale of assets, including hotels and farms, as it reviews its £441m property portfolio.

Dorset Council owns 65 hotels and guest houses, the authority's cabinet was told.

Members voted to approve a six-year plan to review all of the council's properties, disposing of some and making better use of others.

Deputy leader Richard Biggs said: "It's quite frightening that we have as many hotels as we have non-academy schools."

The Liberal Democrat added: "We've got an awful lot of assets.

"Do we need as many? Can we be smarter with them? And the farms estate and hotels estate is a particular area of scrutiny at the moment."

The council's commercial properties also include business parks and industrial estates, councillors heard.

Dealing with assets would be a key part of delivering housing, members were told.

Councillor Simon Clifford, in charge of finance, said: "Over many, many years, and I do mean well over a decade, this area has been really poor in Dorset.

"There's been a lack of rigour, there's been a lack of insight, there's been a lack of understanding of cost benefit. We just made sometimes bizarre decisions."

Director of Place Jan Britton said the council, which was created in 2019, had inherited assets that were collected "without purpose or without strategy" by predecessor authorities.

He said it had a "great deal" of properties, adding: "At the moment we are not always clear why we hold an asset and what we hold it for."

Mr Britton said the Strategic Asset Management Plan was a "line in the sand".