What do we leave behind? As someone who has just hit 60, mortality and impact of course start to weigh more than when I was 40. In local government the same applies. I find myself thinking about a basement in Kent. Specifically, the basement store where Kent CC has, until recently, kept its Visual Arts Loan Scheme. Under the auspices of the new ‘Department of Local Government Efficiency' (DOLGE)—a title that sounds like it was dreamt up by a satirical AI after a long night with Elon Musk—Kent has just auctioned off its heritage. Works by Andy Goldsworthy and Tony Ray Jones went under the hammer to save, reportedly, a mere £35,000.
To put that ‘efficiency' in context: in the current climate, £35k barely covers the cost of three weeks of residential care for one of the ‘million-quid kids' I've written about before. Of course, Kent is merely the latest chapter in a long, depressing book of municipal asset-stripping. When councils get desperate, they stop being custodians and start being liquidators. There is a long and fairly dishonourable history of selling the family silver in local government, none of which has ever ‘saved the day'. Bury sold L.S. Lowry's A Riverbank for £1.4m. They got the cash, but they also got expelled from the Museums Association and became a national pariah for ‘de-accessioning'. Bolton offloaded works by Millais and Picasso for £225k. The public outcry was massive; the dent in the deficit was invisible. Croydon flogged its Riesco Collection for £8.2m to fund library ‘refurbishments', and then went bust anyway. Northamptonshire's £15.8m sale of an Egyptian statue was the ultimate ‘fire sale' before the council's total collapse in 2018. It proved that you can't sell your way out of a systemic crisis.
Does any of this matter? Most people didn't even know their councils owned anything like this. But I think it does. When a council sells off art for ‘small change', it sends a signal to the public that the state is not just broke, but broken. It tells residents that the things that make a place worth living in—culture, history, beauty—are ‘non-essential'. In its heyday local government built monuments to municipal pride and their ‘place' in the UK.
The DOLGE team in Kent might call this ‘reprofiling future spend', but I see it as vandalism for the price of a mid-range SUV. We need brutal candour. Leaders must stop pretending that selling a few photos or a Lowry will bridge the gap left by the collapse of social care funding and inadequate SEND support. The public knows the system is failing. They can see the potholes. If you're going to be honest about the ‘reality of the wreckage', start by admitting that you can't fix a £100m hole with a £35k auction. Once it's gone, it's gone, and with each sale, part of what makes you unique. You do not see Italian cities flogging off their town halls and art works. Instead they are a reason for visitors spending money there. They have fierce local pride about their art, heritage, and food. Many British towns…not so much.
Ben Page is a visiting professor at King's College London
