Wakefield Council's biggest property deals revealed

Wakefield Council made more than £16million from property sales during a four-and-a-half year period.
The sale of Clarke Hall fetched the council 476,000.The sale of Clarke Hall fetched the council 476,000.
The sale of Clarke Hall fetched the council 476,000.

The local authority sold a total of 83 public buildings and spaces between January 2014 and July 2018, figures revealed by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) on Monday showed.

The biggest sale concerned the former Redcats industrial estate on Horbury Road, which was set aside for housebuilding in 2015, and brought £3million into the council.

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Land in Cutsyke, in Whitwood, sold for more than £2.5million in the same year, while another seven figure deal related to the sale of a former primary school site and playing fields on Lawefield Lane, close to Thornes Park.

The biggest sale was that of the old Redcats site, which the council sold to developers for 3m.The biggest sale was that of the old Redcats site, which the council sold to developers for 3m.
The biggest sale was that of the old Redcats site, which the council sold to developers for 3m.

The old registry of deeds office on Newstead Road raised £650,000 in 2017, while the sale of Clarke Hall on Aberford Road two years earlier was worth £476,000.

At the other end of the scale, a total of five properties have been sold for a pound each.

These included Monument House in Pontefract and land which the council owned at South Kirkby Business Park.

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Over the same time period, the council bought 22 properties for an aggregate sum of just over £2.5million.

The most valuable asset bought was land around the site of the Hepworth Gallery, for £750,000 in 2015, from Leeds-based developers St James' Securities.

The old Wood Street police station in the city's civic quarter, which the authority is hoping to have converted to a hotel, cost £520,000.

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