12.5 We judged that the delivery arrangements under the previous Defence infrastructure model, with Defence Estates as the primary delivery organisation, but with the single Services and other TLBs retaining some significant delivery responsibilities (for 'soft' facilities management such as catering and cleaning contracts and Private Finance Initiative / Public-Private Partnership projects), were fragmented and inefficient, and that there was scope for a much greater injection of professional estate skills and expertise. We also found that, with responsibility for identifying their estate requirements and planning and prioritising funding resting largely with the TLBs under the previous model, Defence has struggled to manage its estate and infrastructure as a corporate asset, including to drive further rationalisation and to get the best use out of it.
12.6 The Defence Secretary announced the conclusions of the work on managing Defence infrastructure on 16 February 2011. The new infrastructure model, which we endorsed, will see a single delivery organisation - the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) - taking responsibility for all infrastructure delivery, being given all infrastructure funding, and including a strengthened prioritisation function to coordinate the Services' and other TLBs' needs into an affordable infrastructure programme. A new Defence Infrastructure Board, chaired by an independent with property expertise, will direct the work of the DIO. The purpose of the Defence estate is to support the delivery of military capability, so the model includes mechanisms to ensure that military users' requirements are taken properly into account in the work of the DIO, and that the DIO is held robustly to account for its performance in delivering on behalf of users as well as Defence as a whole. But the model quite deliberately represents a shift to a more corporate, professionally-based approach. In our view, this represents the best way of balancing users' needs with the imperative, particularly in the Department's current financial circumstances, of introducing a more cost-effective model, to enable reductions of some 2,500 posts by 2014, as well as the significant running cost savings and rationalisation receipts assumed in the Department's financial plans.