Once one of the richest cities in the world and a titan of the Industrial Revolution, Bradford dreamed of reinventing itself as Britain’s newest cultural capital.

In the city centre, banners proudly declare ‘It’s Our Time’ – a nod to its turn as UK City of Culture 2025.

Yet the buoyant bunting disguises a stark reality that suggests a more apt slogan would be ‘End of an Era’.

For Bradford’s financially-stricken council is now pawning off its past just to keep the lights on.

A colossal £726m in debt, the very institutions that once held the community together are being valued, catalogued and auctioned off – with prices starting at £1.

Heritage properties, leisure facilities, farm land and rubbish dumps all available to the highest bidder – in what locals have dryly begun calling ‘The Bradford Fire Sale’.

So far, the Labour-run council has scraped together just over £22million by auctioning off 73 of these public assets – including petrol stations, car parks, and care homes.

Yet that figure is still almost £100 million short of what is needed just to plug the immediate hole in this year’s budget.

Ingleborough Hall was marketed at £1.1 million and sold quietly in the summer

To raise vital funds, the council has decided to auction off several properties including the famous Prince of Wales lodge (pictured) to the highest bidder

Welcome to Bradford – the UK’s City of Culture, which has announced it is selling off key assets to plug a staggering £726m debt

And that black hole is getting bigger. Costs are soaring, more cuts are looming and Bradford’s debt mountain is expected to rocket towards £1 billion by 2030.

Another 80 sites are next in line to be disposed – including a golf course, a recycling centre, disused schools and a shopping centre.

One Labour councillor compared the fire sale to ‘selling the family silver’.

Robbie Moore, the Conservative MP for Keighley and Ilkley, added: ‘Over the past few years, Bradford Council’s leadership has been a slow-motion car crash.

‘For council leaders to try and flog off our heritage to fill a hole they themselves have helped dig really is the final straw for so many residents.’

Bradford MBC, which includes well-heeled West Yorkshire towns including Ilkley and Shipley, is not alone in the financial mire.

Councils up and down the land are in peril of bankruptcy.

But the authority’s bleak balance sheet is especially stark. Residents this year endured a near 10 per cent hike in council tax and, as the Mail revealed in February, more than £400m a year is swallowed up by the economic cost of crime and violence.

Penniless Bradford – forecast to have to plug another £120m shortfall next year – has already flogged one recycling centre, along with houses and a hotel under its ownership.

Among the most symbolic losses is Ingleborough Hall, a historic outdoor education centre in the Yorkshire Dales where generations of Bradford schoolchildren learned about bushcraft and caving.

Bradford locals have said considering the state of their city their 2025 status of culture champions is a joke

The Mail revealed in February that more than £400m a year is taken from the budget to deal with the economic cost of crime and violence

The grade-II listed mansion was quietly sold during the summer. The council will not reveal the final price, though it was marketed at £1.1 million.

Former headteacher Julia Britton bemoaned the council’s decision to sell the centre, which had failed to cover its costs.

‘Investing in the children of Bradford would have made a difference to their future,’ she protested.

Other sales announced by the council include the Burnett Street car park in historic Little Germany (£322,000), the Hammerton Street petrol filling station (£93,000), the Drop Kick pub in. Royds (unknown) and the former Rhodesway swimming pool (£508,000),

Council officials had planned to put the 112-year-old Keighley Picture House cinema under the hammer – only to pause plans after a community revolt.

The town hall has been accused of selling assets on the cheap without obtaining good value for taxpayers. This is not immediately obvious and it is true, in some cases, that auction sales have exceeded guide prices.

One of the lots at a recent auction, Salts Wharf in Shipley, sold for more than double its guide price.

But questions are being asked as to why a council so deep in the red is selling a busy car park for just £1.

Council officials had planned to put the 112-year-old Keighley Picture House cinema under the hammer – only to pause plans after a community revolt

Included among the flash sale is this car-park which is being flogged for just £1 at auction

The same car park hosted a thriving summer festival only this summer

The 30-space Caroline Street car park in historic Saltaire is set to make way for a local college’s development of a £6m ‘future technology centre’.

Kate Rawnsley, of Save Our Saltaire, accused the council of ‘giving away’ one of the last remaining open spaces in the village, used for street parties and market events.

Legal correspondence revealed the car park, plus a strip of accompanying land, was a ‘nominal £1’.

Ms Rawnsley said: ‘The selling of valuable land for just £1 – plus the sacrifice of future car park revenue – is a shocking mismanagement of public finances.

‘To discover that this valuable piece of World Heritage Site land is to be sold for a pound is yet another kick in the teeth for struggling Bradford households, who have seen their council tax increase by 9.9% and felt the harsh cuts to vital services.

‘How can a council on the verge of bankruptcy, that is in dept to the tune of millions, play fast and loose and so publicly disregard its responsibilities to its taxpayers?

‘Once this land has entered private ownership, we will never get it back.’

Much-loved Bingley Pool, closed due to rising maintenance costs, will also be put up for sale, it was announced this week.

The facility previously had been earmarked for a multimillion-pound refurbishment.

Alun Grifftihs, a Lib Dem councillor, helped halt council plans to sell off parts of Buck Wood, ancient woodland described as the ‘lungs of the Aire Valley’.

He accused the council of ‘financial mismanagement’ and failing to come clean on exactly what – and what is not – up for sale.

Cllr Griffiths said: ‘For councillors to do our job properly we need to know what’s up for sale and at risk in our wards, so we can make a decision with our residents as to whether we’re comfortable with that or not.

‘We’d like to know in good time.’

Last year Bradford Council was granted £220m-worth of ‘exceptional financial support’ by the Government after warning that its spending outstripped its income.

The bailout allowed the authority to borrow money to pay for day-to-day services.

It also gave the council unusual permission to use money from the sale of land and buildings – known as capital receipts. Not for new schools or roads, but to pay social care bills, wages and refuse collections.

Next month two car parks on Pine Street in Bradford will go under the hammer in an online property auction.

The smaller of the two, a 0.2-acre strip of tarmac, has a guide price of £60,000. The larger, to the south of the same road, is expected to fetch £100,000.

The dilatated Rhodesway Pool complex will also be sold off to raise funds

Other assets set to be disposed include a Victorian lodge in a Bingley park, described as a ‘rare renovation project’, the Calverley golf course and a former village hall in Cullingworth.

Civic leaders blame years of austerity under Conservative governments for leaving town halls financially starved.

However, locals in Bradford accused the council of financial neglect and wastefulness.

Garth Durkin, who has run Aloha Sunbeds in Bradford City Centre, berated the council for misspending money on ‘vanity projects’ rather than tacking ‘real issues’, such as homelessness and drug addiction which had blighted his business.

Almost to prove his point while speaking to the Daily Mail, Mr Durkin spotted on CCTV that a homeless man had entered his business and was rooting around cupboards, presumably in the hope of finding something to steal.

Mr Durkin, 65, said: ‘Bradford has some of the most beautiful buildings in England. I mean, absolutely stunning architecture.

‘If you were only looking up, you’d think you were in the finest city.

‘But if you look in front of you, you see what the city is really like.

‘My impression is they’ve spent a lot of money on vanity project sand some crackpot ideas, and not really fixed the issues that matter.

‘I don’t know if the council are actually Bradford people. Do they understand what Bradford needs?

‘They’ve poured millions into City of Culture and tarting up parts of of the city centre. But is that’s what’s really needed? I haven’t seen any benefit.’

While the council’s rampant cost-cutting goes on, taxpayers also told of their fury at salaries handed to its top brass. Chief executive Lorraine O’Donnell takes home £217,479 a year – more than £50,000 more than the Prime Minister.

Mature student Paul Armitage, 52, said ‘The people at the top still have their positions of power – they aren’t taking pay cuts.

‘Yet we are all having to pay more in council tax.

‘They should do the honourable thing and say ‘we’re all in this together’, but they won’t.

‘We’ve got an epidemic of fly-tipping, there are rats on the streets.

”City of Culture’ is the council just trying to keep up appearances and hope people don’t notice the inherent problems. There are massive problems here.’

Janet Megson, 80, who has lived in Bradford for 40 years, said: “The council has lost it completely.

‘I mean they’ve done up the city centre but when you look around the outskirts you think, ‘what?’ It’s falling to pieces.

‘The council is full of the wrong people. The City of Culture project has been an absolute joke.

‘Bradford could be wonderful place to live but there needs to be a complete change of attitude.

‘They’ve got the priorities all wrong. They’ve spent money on all the wrong things.

‘It’s such a shame and so depressing.’

Bradford has suffered from decades of industrial decline and the scars are visible

The area is also full of run-down buildings and flats, with windows boarded up with cardboard

Bradford has suffered from decades of industrial decline, pockets of deep poverty, and national scrutiny over child sexual exploitation scandals.

The council insists it is trying to rebuild. It points to regeneration schemes such as the £21 million Darley Street Market development – part of a wider plan that includes more than a thousand new homes and the remodelling of the city centre.

Yet, despite these ambitions, Bradford remains dangerously far from financial stability.

While it has not yet been pushed to issuing a Section 114 notice – effectively declaring bankruptcy – questions linger over how long it can avoid it… and how much is left to sell.

The council hopes to have generated £150m by 2029 from selling unwanted assets. The target is currently a long way off.

A Bradford Council spokesperson said: ‘As with most Council’s across the country we have a longstanding disposal policy for buildings and assets that are either no longer viable or required as part of our estate.

‘As part of a clear financial plan to return the council to financial sustainability we have significantly expanded and accelerated this work, in consultation with elected members.

‘These sales, many of which are for the freehold of the building while the operational side of it continues unchanged, reduce the amount of long-term borrowing costs, minimising the burden to council taxpayers and helping protect service budgets in the future.’

The council said it had proposed selling the Caroline Street car park for ‘less than best consideration’ because ‘it is believed that the future purpose of the land will contribute to the promotion or improvement of economic, social and environmental well-being of residents and people visiting the area’.