4.61 There are over 1500 individual property centres (organisations that manage property directly) across government.42 The NAO has highlighted the need to improve coordination by, for example, adopting opportunities for co-location.43 But organisational barriers can be difficult to overcome. This issue arises both at the national and local levels where departments and other bodies often do not look for the best fit across the whole of the public sector, and instead manage property in isolation.
4.62 Greater collaboration will improve the quality of service for citizens,44 as well as achieve significant economies of scale, for example in the procurement of facilities management (see Box 4.F). The opportunity for co-location of the office estate is particularly apparent for the office estate around Westminster, where around 15 per cent of the total central government office space (around 1.2 million square metres) is located in close proximity to the Houses of Parliament.45
Box 4.F: Collaboration in facilities management (FM) procurement The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has developed an innovative approach for procuring FM across the central department and its executive agencies. The 15- year contract with a private sector partner, who is financially incentivised to reduce the overall cost of the estate, has a value of approximately £900 million and is expected to deliver £126 million of annual cost reductions. This has largely been achieved by moving from a localised approach, where each business unit scoped and delivered its own FM requirements, to a partnership arrangement with joint governance and collective ownership of the Defra property strategy. By adopting a collaborative approach that works across organisational boundaries, Defra has been able to use its estate expertise to control costs centrally and ensure there remains a focus on the agreed business objectives - including efficiency and value for money, service improvement, transforming the work environment and sustainability - while maintaining good relationships with its executive agencies and private sector partner. |
4.63 There are similar opportunities in other large urban areas with a large public sector presence for developing regional "hubs", where the public sector can share property. The West Midlands initiative,46 if extended to involve wider public sector partners, could be an encouraging development.
4.64 But despite the clear benefits, organisations frequently fail to overcome the barriers to collaboration. The causes can be as simple as the lack of common systems for IT and security, but also arise from a lack of information about the opportunities available or, at a deeper level, resistance to the sharing of property.
4.65 The central property function would play a role in developing cross-government initiatives to overcome the barriers to sharing of property, such as those presented by IT and security. It would also work to promote regional planning across the public sector, providing assistance when requested and facilitating collaboration where opportunities arise. More uniform and publicly available information will also be important in enabling organisations to look for opportunities for co-location or other types of collaboration.
4.66 Greater collaboration also needs to be encouraged at the local level. Because of their leadership role with other local service providers, local authorities should be pivotal in developing such collaborative approaches. This is especially relevant where the provision of services is linked and where assets are of a similar type. Local strategic partnerships (LSPs)47 should be encouraged to play a role in the development of asset management strategies across different local or regional providers. Ideally this should lead to the publication of local area strategies for the public estate.
4.67 For local public services, the role of the Audit Commission is particularly important in improving performance. In this respect the stronger focus on use of resources and on locally driven cross-partnership working, which is being introduced as part of the new delivery and inspection regime for local government, is welcome.
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42 This includes all property centres in the central civil estate, local authorities, health trusts, fire and police authorities and others.
43 Improving the efficiency of central government's office property, National Audit Office, 2007.
44 Service transformation: a better service for citizens and business deal for the taxpayer, Sir David Varney, December 2006.
45 Office of Government Commerce, e-PIMS database.
46 Civil Service in the West Midlands (CSWM) is a pilot of Civil Service in the English Regions that has adopted the principle of a regional estates strategy.
47 LSPs bring together representatives from all the organisations (e.g. health, police, schools and fire authorities) responsible for delivering services locally. The LSP sets and delivers the priorities across the locality through targets set out in a local area agreement (LAA) which is agreed with central government.