THE very last of West Somerset Council's 'family silver' looks set to be sold to enable the authority to pay off a £3.5 million debt.

The former Aquasplash site, the purpose-built visitor information centre on Minehead seafront and land originally earmarked for a new swimming pool off Seaward Way will all be marketed for sale.

Cabinet members agreed to appoint agents Bruton Knowles to market the trio of sites - but without any fixed sale prices at this stage.

Chief executive Adrian Dyer stressed it was very much a speculative exercise but a necessary one as the authority only had until February next year to settle the outstanding £3.5 million loan.

At Wednesday's cabinet meeting, members agreed a fixed scale of marketing fees totalling £10,000 for the three sites.

A further set of capped fees and an additional £8,500 in marketing costs would apply if they ultimately decided to go-ahead and sell the sites.

But councillors made it clear the council would only sell if the price was right.

Cllr Kate Kravis, the authority's lead member for finance, said the visitor information centre, in particular, could well remain within the council's ownership.

"We are not saying we are selling that building, we are just having a look as we need to know if we do sell it, how much we could get for it.

"There are a number of covenants on it and we need to know if someone is interested in it what they want it for and what covenants would need to be lifted.

"However, it could still be used for other things," Cllr Kravis said.

The flagship tourist information centre was closed in October 2011 after the council said it could not afford the £40,000 a year running costs.

Since then it has remained empty as restrictive covenants prevent its use as anything other than a tourist information centre or other community-based use.

Explicit restrictions also prevent its use as a shop, hotel, pub, restaurant, amusement arcade or, going back to a condition imposed in 1935, a lunatic asylum or hospital for infectious diseases.

According to council figures released last year, the covenants, in turn, impact on the value of the building, meaning the authority would only be able to rent it out for a maximum of between £10,000 and £12,000 a year - without the covenants they could get up to £30,000.

Similarly, to sell the building, the council could only ask between £125,000 and £150,000 for it - covenant-free, that figure rises to £225,000 to £250,000.

But trying to remove the covenants, which in itself would prove expensive in legal costs, could be fraught with a whole new set of dangers.

The centre was built with £203,193 of European Regional Development Funding and there is a real risk the council could have to pay back some of the money if it sold the building or tried to maximise its value by removing the covenants.

Similar restrictions have also prevented the sale of the former Aquasplash site, until now.

As part of the sale of the Vulcan Road car park to Morrisons, a restriction was put on the Aquasplash land preventing its sale for commercial development until October 2012.

The aim was largely to prevent rival Tesco buying up the plot to extend its existing Minehead store; something which could now be a very real possibility.

The Aquasplash pool was closed in October 2007 after the 15-year-old facility sprung a leak, repairs were deemed too expensive and the council said it could not afford to run the facility.

At the time, the authority had still been hoping it could build a new multi-million pound pool as part of the 'New Horizons' healthplex scheme, which included the new hospital off Seaward Way.

But within weeks that hope was shattered when a temporary finance chief, drafted in following the departure of former chief executive Tim Howes and his deputy Rod Latham, discovered huge holes in the council's finances just ten days after taking up the post.

She told councillors she had found a £1 million gap in the authority's budgets and massive savings had to be made.

The council had to pull out of the New Horizons deal and was left with no choice but to sell every asset possible, including Vulcan Road car park to Morrisons, to pay off its debts.

These included loans of more than £11 million.

Councillors were told back then they would be unable to spend any of the money raised in sales on other projects as every penny was needed to bail out the authority.

Since then, the holes have been plugged and huge savings have been made but today the authority is still in dire straights financially.

However, the cash pressures now, although partly due to the toxic legacy left by the financial horrors uncovered in 2007, are now largely due to an historic failure to increase Council Tax, coupled with severe reductions in central Government funding.