Woking's loans to ThamesWey Housing were marked down by £156m to £248.2m in its 2025/26 accounts. Victoria Square's rose by £32m. What it means for the borough.
Woking Borough Council has cut the value of its loans to ThamesWey Housing by £155.96 million. The loans are now valued at £248.2 million, against a book value of £404.2 million before the review.
The figures are in the council’s unaudited Statement of Accounts for 2025/26, at 31 March 2026 (accounts, narrative report and note 16(a)). They went to the Audit and Governance Committee on 17 September (report AUD26-038).
ThamesWey Housing is a council-owned company set up, the accounts say, to “provide affordable housing”. It owns many of the new homes on the Sheerwater estate, and the council has funded it with loans.
Why the value fell
A write-down means the council no longer expects to get all of the money back. The accounts say the council “is unable to recover a significant proportion of its loans to subsidiary companies”.
For ThamesWey Housing, the new figure comes from outside valuations of the company’s property. They were carried out “as part of the asset review and sales process”, the accounts say. The resulting values “represent the amounts recoverable against the Council’s loans”.
The Executive agreed in June 2026 to start selling ThamesWey Housing. We covered the land fixes needed before that sale in our report on the Sheerwater land deal.
Two years of write-downs
This is the second year running that the loans have been marked down. In 2024/25 the book value of £450.9 million was cut by £48.2 million, to £402.7 million.
Taken together, the two reviews have written £204.2 million off the loans. The book value also moved a little between reviews, as the company borrowed £1.4 million more in 2025/26.
Not every company went down
Some of the council’s other loans were valued higher this year. The accounts call these reversals of earlier impairments, where the council now expects to recover more.
| Company | Value after review, 31 Mar 2026 | Change in 2025/26 |
|---|---|---|
| ThamesWey Housing | £248.2m | down £155.96m |
| Victoria Square Woking | £178.1m | up £32.46m |
| ThamesWey Energy | £5.0m | up £5.73m |
| ThamesWey Developments | £9.3m | up £4.8m |
| Hoe Bridge School (formerly Greenfield School) | £11.69m | up £4.38m |
| ThamesWey Central Milton Keynes | £8.0m | up £3.0m |
| Freedom Leisure | £0 | down £1.21m |
Across all its loans to companies and other bodies, the net write-down for the year was £106.47 million. In 2024/25 it was £83.38 million.
The accounts say the Hoe Bridge School loan has been restructured and the council now expects it to be repaid in full. The Victoria Square figure is also based on outside valuations of the assets Victoria Square Woking holds.
What it means for you
- No direct effect on this year’s council tax. The accounts say write-downs are reversed through the council’s reserves, “ensuring that there is no direct impact on the Council’s General Fund balance”. The General Fund is the account that pays for day-to-day services.
- It does shape the debt problem. Money the council cannot recover from its companies is money it cannot use to pay down its own borrowing. We covered the government’s plan to repay part of that borrowing in Woking’s debt repayment report.
- The figures are not final. These accounts are unaudited. Grant Thornton began its audit in July and is due to finish fieldwork by 30 November. Its findings are expected at the Audit and Governance Committee in November, ahead of a government deadline of 31 January 2027.
- The last fully audited accounts are for 2018/19. Audit opinions for several later years are still outstanding, the accounts say.
The council says the outcome of its asset sales “will continue to inform the valuation of loans and shareholdings in future financial statements”. The price ThamesWey Housing sells for will be the real test of the £248.2 million figure.
How the borough’s finances reach your bill is set out on our Woking council tax bands page.
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