Bradford Council will have to publish a register of all land and buildings it owns in a Government effort to identify potential savings.

The local authority has revealed it has £1 billion in assets, the eight most valuable of which are schools, followed by the Alhambra Theatre.

A Council spokesman said: “We are not going to be selling those off.”

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles, a former leader of Bradford Council, said most taxpayers were not aware of the “sheer scale and scope” of the number of assets owned by the public sector across the country.

The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) estimates land and property owned by the sector could be worth £385 billion, with almost two thirds owned by Councils.

Mr Pickles has asked all public bodies to catalogue every asset in a bid to identify billions of pounds of possible savings.

“I want the public sector to take a good hard look at what they own,” he said.

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