FACED with the challenge of raising up to £154 million over the next five years, Redbridge Council is throwing open the books and asking residents to make the figures add up.

A growing population has left the council needing new schools and wanting a new swimming pool, but plans to raise money through selling off car parks and allotments have created such a storm of opposition it is setting up a dedicated website for residents to decide what stays, what comes and what goes.

Part of the council's Big Conversation', the website goes online at the start of May for six weeks and the results are expected to provide an unprecedented degree of insight into what future people want for their borough.

A detailed list of what the council owns and what it could sell was presented to councillors but officers were warned that they could end up selling the council short.

Former council leader Allan Burgess said many developers already had all the land they needed, adding: "All developers have land banks and, with the market being what it is, they are pulling back on what they are building, so they are going to be very cautious about buying new land.

"By the time you have done all your deliberations, all your land will be going on the market broadly at the same time when the developers are not interested and when you are glutting the market."

Chief officer Roger Hampson said: "We won't want a fire sale. Ideally we want to take advantage of the market going down on what we are buying and maybe operate some sort of land bank ourselves.

"There are a lot of options but dumping a lot of land on the market at the bottom of the market would be a very stupid thing to do."

Conservative rebel Cllr Harold Moth condemned the exercise, saying decisions had already been made. He added: "I question how long we are going to have this complete farce going on.

"It's going to become known as the Redbridge Lie' because the Conservative group had a meeting last year deciding which properties on here would be sold."

Mr Hampson said: "The cabinet has been very clear that decisions haven't been made and can't possibly be made on the land sales."

Council officers estimate that perhaps 1,500 people will take part, but Roding ward Cllr Ian Bond said that was pessimistic and that budget consultations in previous years had produced as many as 4,000 responses.

Mr Hampson said: "When Bristol did a consultation exercise they got 64 responses. That wasn't online but it's not common to get a lot of responses. This is saying that we are taking people seriously and we are giving them all the information we have."