County council only Kent authority to sell off art

Kent County Council was the only local authority in the county to sell works of art in the past year.

Freedom of Information requests by the BBC found the council sold 418 artworks in total between May 2025 and April 2026 and was the only council in Kent to do so.

As of 30 April, the county council owned 1,231 works and said none of its collection was on display.

"Due to a lack of viable storage options and in light of significant financial pressures the county council faces, we sometimes have to take difficult decisions to sell off some of our collection," the county council said.

Much of the art was sold at auction in July 2025 for about £40,000.

Those items had been in storage since a scheme for lending the works to schools and workplaces became defunct more than a decade ago.

Art sold included works by Victor Passmore, Anthony Gross and Australian artist Sir Sidney Nolan.

KCC's Liberal Democrat group leader Antony Hook accused the council's Reform UK administration of "a short-sighted act of civic vandalism".

"Once these treasures are sold off to private collectors, they are gone forever," he said.

"Kent deserves proper stewardship, accountability, and answers - not an unmonitored backroom fire sale."

Paula Orrell, director at Contemporary Visual Arts Network England, described the sales as "another example of how the arts is not valued".

"They've been bought for the experience of the general public," she told the BBC.

"The council probably has greater assets that they can sell off to have an impact on their budgets."

The council said its archive service was "committed to reviewing works of art" in line with the council's "collection policies for archives and local history".

The BBC asked KCC how much money it raised from the sale of the Two Stones sculpture back to its creator, Angel of the North designer Antony Gormley.

The boulders had sat outside Kent History and Library Centre in Maidstone since 2013. They had been situated in Ashford until 2010, when they were removed due to vandalism.

The 1979 work - the artist's first commission - consists of a granite boulder and a bronze and concrete replica, according to Art UK.

KCC's annual accounts for 2024-25 listed the sculptures, commissioned while Gormley was teaching at Maidstone College of Art, as valued at £859,000.

The council declined to provide the value of the agreed sale, citing an exemption in Freedom of Information rules protecting "commercial interests".

Gormley was contacted for comment.

Hook criticised "a shocking lack of transparency and basic oversight" over decisions to sell the artworks.

"There has been no detailed paper on these sell-offs presented to any committee of the council to comment on or approve," he said.

A council spokesperson said they were "unable to disclose the costs" related to the sale as the information was "part of a confidential legal agreement" with the purchaser.

The BBC Freedom of Information requests revealed a disparity in the amount of works owned by local authorities in Kent.

Canterbury City Council and Maidstone Borough Council reported owning more than 6,000 works each, while others held only a handful.

The number of works on display also varied, with multiple authorities reporting that they did not have any of their artwork on display.

Orrell said public art could help people "see those areas as a place to live and to move to", which in turn "incites a kind of regeneration and an economy".

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