MK to Sell Up to 250 Council Garages, 57% Now Empty

Milton Keynes City Council owns 2,090 garages and carports, and 1,190 of them are empty. On 25 August it approved a plan to shrink the estate: sell up to 250 garages to the people who live next to them, demolish 146 more, and hold rents where they are for a third year.

The Garage Asset Management Strategy 2026-2030 was signed off at the council’s Delegated Decisions meeting and published the next day. It is the first time the council has set out what it intends to do with an estate it admits has been run “on a largely reactive maintenance basis”.

Bletchley carries most of the problem, and most of the change.

57% empty, and worst in the housing stock

The void rate is not evenly spread. Garages held in the Housing Revenue Account, the council’s landlord account, are more than two thirds empty.

The strategy blames changing vehicle sizes, the condition of the garages themselves, and where they are. It says void levels are worst in Bletchley.

It also explains part of the recent decline. New lettings were paused for six months while the service transferred to the council’s Property and Development team and this strategy was written. Lettings have now restarted, targeting postcodes with the highest void rates, and 48 new licences have been issued.

Every phase of garages released so far has been over-subscribed, the report says. That is why officers think a 95% occupancy target on the retained stock is realistic.

What happens to each garage

Officers reviewed every asset, cross-checked it against billing and condition records, and plotted the estate on a map. Each garage was then put into one of five categories.

Bletchley accounts for 1,025 of the 1,715 garages in that plan. That breaks down as 235 of the 829 to be retained, 281 of the 303 offered to residents, 270 of the 284 put to an alternative use, 105 of the 146 for demolition and 134 of the 138 for other disposal.

Two of those categories matter most to residents.

Sell to neighbours. A lot of the estate is not big blocks but ones, twos and threes along residential streets. Those will be offered first to the people living immediately next to them. Bletchley holds 281 of the 303 in this category.

Demolish. Cleared plots become surface parking, and the strategy is explicit that this parking sits outside the Traffic Regulation Order, so it would be free for residents. That only applies where the site is at low risk of fly-tipping or anti-social behaviour.

The council’s own papers do not agree on how many will go. The table in both documents puts demolitions at 146. The text of the strategy says “we have identified 99 garages which should be demolished”. Neither figure counts garages inside a regeneration scheme such as The Lakes or the Agora.

The council will start listing garages for sale on its own website and writing to nearby residents and businesses to test demand. It expects to sell 150 to 250 garages over the next two years.

What a garage is worth, and what it costs to rent

The strategy’s own valuation puts a single garage at £10,000 to £16,000 depending on condition and location. On that range, selling 150 to 250 would raise between £1.5m and £4m.

The covering report gives a lower figure for the same thing: £8,000 to £10,000 a garage. The two documents went to the same meeting on the same day. Whole garage sites, the report adds, have recently fetched up to £100,000 at auction.

For tenants, the number that matters is the rent, and it is not moving.

An MKCC garage costs £16.40 a week, discounted to £13.67 for council tenants. Rents were last increased in 2023/24 and have been frozen for the two years since.

The strategy does not propose an increase now, though it points out that privately owned garages in Milton Keynes let for £130 to £264 a month. Instead it recommends tying future rises to CPI, capped at 4% and floored at 1%, written explicitly into the licence so tenants can plan.

The money

Garage rents brought in £689,119 across both portfolios in 2024/25. After repairs of £56,183, the net figure was £632,936. Bad debts took £6,188 and depreciation £42,993.

Spread across the 900 occupied garages, that is a blended £703 a year each.

Against that, condition surveys put the cost of bringing every garage up to a satisfactory standard at close to £1m, and the report says that money is not funded. Many of the garages have asbestos roofs, which pushes up both cost and risk.

The decision allocates £50,000 in the 2026/27 capital programme, funded from capital receipts. A larger annual investment programme is deferred to the 2027/28 budget round.

The council also agreed to keep 20% of any additional revenue in a sinking fund, so that maintenance eventually pays for itself. Officers looked at handing the whole operation to a garage management contractor and concluded it does not deliver value for money while the repair backlog is this large. They will revisit it once the estate is smaller.

What it means for you

• If you rent a council garage, your rent is unchanged for now. It stays at £16.40 a week, or £13.67 if you are a council tenant. Future rises will be CPI-linked, capped at 4%.
• If you want one, they are being released again. Lettings restarted after a six-month pause and are being targeted at areas with the highest voids. Every phase so far has been over-subscribed.
• If there is a garage block next to your house in Bletchley, watch for a letter. 281 of the 303 garages earmarked for sale to residents are in Bletchley, and the council will write to adjacent households to test interest.
• If a nearby block is demolished, the plot should become free parking. The strategy says surface parking on cleared garage sites sits outside the Traffic Regulation Order. That will not apply everywhere, only where the site is low risk. Our parking in Milton Keynes page covers the charged bays.
• Nothing is final. The report calls its own category numbers “illustrative purposes only”, and every disposal still needs a business case, a valuation and legal sign-off.

Sources

• Milton Keynes City Council, decision record: Council-owned Garages Strategy, 25 August 2026
• Council-owned Garages Strategy, officer report to Delegated Decisions, 25 August 2026
• Garage Asset Management Strategy 2026-2030, annex to that report