A FURTHER £30m will be spent by the council on commercial property in a bid to up its annual income.

Since 2016 Bracknell Forest Council has spent almost £60m on developments and businesses it believes will generate returns.

This month details of two of those sales are due to be made public, including further information about a customer service centre in Yorkshire and a distribution centre in East Anglia.

In July an additional £20m was made available on top of the existing £40m, but now that returns have fallen from the expected five per cent to 3.5 per cent a year, a further £30m will be put forward.

Councillor Peter Heydon, executive member for finance and transformation, said: "Given the financial challenge facing the council, we've been looking at ways of generating income to supplement our reducing levels of government funding.

"To this end we have been successfully investing in commercial property and this provides around £2m in net revenue for us to fund services for our residents.

"In order to see that annual income rise to £3m, the executive looked at increasing our investment in commercial property by up to £30m last week. The additional income this will generate will be used to benefit local residents and the community via the services we are able to provide."

Bracknell is not the only council in the country bolstering its property portfolio.

Town halls lured in by low interest loans from the Public Works Loan Board in England and Wales spent £758m buying up commercial property in the first eight months of this year, according to property market data from Savills.

Last year Spelthorne Borough Council bought BP’s International Centre for Business at its Sunbury-on-Thames campus for around £350m.