EASTLEIGH council have purchased a former post office.

The Post Office building, that has prominent retail frontage onto the middle of the High Street, was purchased for £650,000.

The building includes the sorting office and production house, that is currently home to a Creative Hub co-working space for Eastleigh’s creative industries.

The centre has been operated on a short lease arrangement with the Post Office as landlords by the Council since September 2017. It provides a base for 16 micro-businesses providing accommodation that enables creative businesses to grow and prosper.

Cabinet Lead for Regeneration Cllr Paul Bicknell said: “This is great news for the town. The acquisition of this site means that the Creative Hub is protected.

It also enables the Council to explore ways of enhancing public links between High Street and Market Street and improving the routes and spaces in the town currently serving only as commercial service roads.”

The news of the purchase comes after MP Mims Davis, a member of parliament for Eastleigh said that using tax payer cash to fund "potentially risky investments" is "putting local services under threat."

Revealed by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, it shows that the authority currently has outstanding borrowing of £363 million, which is almost 12 times its annual budget of £31 million.

But, leader of the council Keith House has hit back at the claims, citing that the authority has “one of the best records in the country at keeping council tax down and protecting services”.

In the recently released data, it shows that the authority has made large investment in assets outside of its controlled area, including £18,126,430 in Aviation Business Park at Bournemouth International Airport in August 2017, and £23,045,000 in One City Park, Hove in January this year.

Blasting the authority, the Conservative Eastleigh MP said: “I understand that the Liberal Democrats (controlling party) on Eastleigh Borough Council are keen to fund the 8 per cent pay rise that they awarded themselves this year, however, more and more of my constituents are realising the crippling level of debt that this small council has now amassed.

“With £363 million-worth of debt – £8000 for every household in the borough – and having borrowed just over 11 times its budget, Eastleigh Borough Council must stop burying these decisions in exempt business at Cabinet meetings where the majority of Councillors and members of the public have no sight of these decisions being taken and the risk that they pose to local services.”

She added: “Yet again, the ball is in the court of our local Lib Dem councillors, and like many of my constituents, I hope that for once they will be open and transparent, and explain these risky investments, which have left this small borough council as the fourth most indebted of its size!”

In the report released by The Bureau, councils across the county say that they have been forced to find new ways to generate income given the steep cuts in central government funding, which the National Audit Office calculates has fallen by half in real terms since 2010.

But experts warn that commercial property investments are volatile, and the fact that councils are financing them through borrowing makes them even riskier. If anything goes wrong, the consequences for taxpayers could be severe.

Cllr House, whose party holds 32 of the 39 council seats, said: “Eastleigh Borough Council has one of the best records in the country at keeping council tax down and protecting services.

“The Conservatives look with envy at our record: Council tax down, in real terms, 15 years in a row with not only no cuts to services, but funding put back into areas that the Conservative-run Hampshire County County has cut, like libraries, theatres and youth services.

“Rather than scare-mongering, Mims Davies would do better standing up for Eastleigh residents in Parliament fighting cuts to public services rather than following the failed Government line of unnecessary continued austerity.”