{"id":2117777,"date":"2026-10-07T07:45:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T06:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebusinessdesk.com\/westmidlands\/?p=2117777"},"modified":"2026-10-07T11:02:39","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T10:02:39","slug":"how-birmingham-city-council-gave-away-a-primary-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebusinessdesk.com\/westmidlands\/news\/2117777-how-birmingham-city-council-gave-away-a-primary-school","title":{"rendered":"How Birmingham City Council accidentally gave away a primary school"},"content":{"rendered":"

I walked past George Dixon Primary School every day on my way to secondary school. Not once did it occur to me that it might one day belong to a care home company.<\/p>\n

Yet that’s where things stand. Birmingham City Council is suing to get the Edgbaston school back, after accidentally handing it over when it sold a neighbouring house in 2013.<\/p>\n

The mistake went unnoticed for 11 years, and the council has now launched High Court proceedings against care provider NH Care Ltd and its lender Lloyds Bank, as first reported by the Telegraph<\/a>.<\/p>\n

How do you lose a whole primary school? It turns out to be remarkably easy.<\/p>\n

Step 1: Put a house and a school on the same title<\/strong>
\nThe three-bed house on Fountain Road was once the school caretaker’s cottage, and its back garden borders the playing fields. Crucially, it shared a Land Registry title number with the school itself.<\/p>\n

Step 2: Use the wrong form<\/strong>
\nNH Care bought the house at auction for \u00a3395,000. The transfer was drafted on a TR1, which hands over everything under a title number, rather than a TP1, which transfers only part of it.<\/p>\n

Step 3: Sign it anyway, then wait 11 years<\/strong>
\nThe council’s conveyancer signed it off. Nobody noticed until 2024, when the school looked into becoming an academy and discovered the council no longer owned it.<\/p>\n

The council’s case rests on three arguments. It says the sale contract only covered the house, that the mistake was mutual because the buyer’s lawyers drafted the form, and that selling school playing fields needs the education secretary’s consent, which was never sought. NH Care has not filed a response, and the school has carried on as normal throughout.<\/p>\n

So far, so farcical. But the timing makes this more than a funny story.<\/p>\n

Birmingham is in the middle of one of the biggest public property sell-offs in the country. The council has sold off hundreds of properties and plots of land since September 2023, the month it declared itself effectively bankrupt. <\/a><\/p>\n

Commissioners say around \u00a3750m of disposals will be needed to fund historic budget deficits and equal pay, and the council has to date achieved sales of \u00a3380m, with the programme now not expected to be fully delivered until at least the end of 2028. Council building sale approved amid plans for \u2018major landmark mosque\u2019 +2<\/p>\n

That means hundreds more homes, shops, car parks, depots and plots of land are still to go, many of them through auctions, just as the Fountain Road house was. A lot of that estate will be old, oddly shaped and patched together over decades, exactly the kind of land where a former caretaker’s cottage can end up on the same title as the school next door.<\/p>\n

The George Dixon case shows how little it takes. One wrong form, signed by both sides and missed by everyone for over a decade, and a council has spent years and now High Court fees trying to undo it. Meanwhile, a lender that thought it was securing a loan against a house has found itself named in a dispute over a primary school.<\/p>\n

For buyers, the lesson is to check exactly what’s on the title before you sign, not just what’s in the auction catalogue. For the council, under pressure from commissioners to keep the sales moving, the lesson is that speed and scrutiny have to go together. A fire sale is no time to start giving away schools.<\/p>\n

As for the house, it has reportedly stood empty since the sale. It’s possibly the only part of this deal that hasn’t changed hands by accident.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One wrong form in a \u00a3395,000 house sale handed George Dixon Primary School to a care firm. Birmingham City Council now wants it back<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":284306,"featured_media":2117778,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137137,120782,120902,136545,9],"coauthors":[137138],"class_list":["post-2117777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","category-economy","category-legal","category-local-government","category-property","tag-featured-story","tag-greater-birmingham"],"yoast_head":"\nHow Birmingham City Council accidentally gave away a primary school | TheBusinessDesk.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"One wrong form in a \u00a3395,000 house sale handed George Dixon Primary School to a care firm. 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