TWO West Somerset industrial estates are set to be sold off as Somerset Council battles to avoid going bankrupt.

The council, which faced a £100 million budget shortfall, expected in February to issue a ‘section 114’ notice which effectively declares a state of bankruptcy.

But it managed to agree a budget after announcing 1,200 redundancies and £35 million of cuts to services, while the Government gave it a dispensation to meet day to day bills by selling off capital assets.

Now, a list of some of the assets to be sold has been published, which includes the Roughmoor Enterprise Centre, in Williton, and Dulverton’s Barns Close industrial estate.

Roughmoor is an older industrial estate with 15 small units let to a number of tenants with no active economic development or business support from the council.

Council executive director Jason Vaughan said the site was considered a commercial asset rather than part of the authority’s Enterprise Centre network.

Mr Vaughan said the intention was to sell it on the open market.

The Dulverton site was also an older industrial estate set within a residential area with four units let to two tenants and again was considered a commercial asset rather than an enterprise centre, which would be sold via auction.

Other West Somerset sites earmarked for disposal included land at Splatt, Spaxton, where planning permission was given four years ago and the house and farm buildings sold.

Mr Vaughan said 87 acres of land was retained by the authority and was currently leased.

The land had limited use for new entrant farmers, and did not have any phosphates or biodiversity loss mitigation value, so would be sold on the open market.

Another property proposed to be sold on the open market was 11 South Street, Wiveliscombe, the empty caretakers house on the Kingsmead School campus, where the lease had been surrendered back to the authority.

The council’s children’s services was approached but discounted using it due to the volume of remodelling work and financial investment required to enable occupation.

Mr Vaughan said office accommodation rationalisation and the relocation of services in West Somerset and Yeovil meant C Block in the council’s County Hall, Taunton, headquarters could also be sold.

Marketing had started and it should be of interest to developers potentially seeking to use it for residential housing.

Mr Vaughan said the council was particularly looking for interest which would secure key worker accommodation.

Somerset councillors will meet on Wednesday (July 24) to consider the proposed sell-offs before its executive takes a final decision.

Mr Vaughan said the council was still at risk of going bankrupt, which would mean ceding local decision-making on such asset disposals.

It ran the risk of not achieving the council’s strategic and asset management objectives, so stepping up the disposal programme now would mitigate such risk.

Mr Vaughan said the funding gap was currently £80 million this year and predicted to rise to £100 million next year.

All the proposed sell-off sites were surplus to requirements.