Improvement and Efficiency West Midlands (IEWM) has been leading the way in helping West Midlands local authorities tackle the property implications of the country’s fiscal crisis.

Last year it co-authored, along with Local Partnerships, a report titled ‘The Way Forward’. The report was subsequently referenced to in HM Treasury’s Total Place report as demonstrating the scale of opportunity that existed across the region’s local government estate for savings and efficiencies.

The report identified the potential of achieving some £640m of cashable savings over 10 years for the West Midlands, comprising capital receipts and revenue savings.

An underlying feature of the report recommendations was the requirement for a collaborative approach amongst local authorities and their partners.

This has been acted upon with the creation of the West Midlands Property Alliance (WMPA) set up to orchestrate and oversee the programme. The WMPA aim is to accelerate the achievement of value and efficiencies from the region's public sector estate, whilst contributing to the successful achievement of place based delivery of public services, resulting in the creation of a smaller, higher quality, better utilised public sector estate.

An Executive Board, chaired by Martin Reeves, Chief Executive of Coventry City Council, is tasked with overseeing the programme which has already made notable progress.

During April and May, Worcestershire County Council and the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) facilitated a number of workshop sessions across the region to help authorities and their partners with the process of mapping assets and identifying rationalisation and collaboration opportunities. A cluster of the five authorities within the Birmingham and Black Country sub-regions are actively looking at practical solutions to the physical barriers that discourage the collaborative occupation of accommodation by public sector partners.

While the two sub-regions of Staffordshire, and Coventry, Solihull & Warwickshire are separately working on initiatives to move towards more collaborative models of Facilities Management delivery, not only to achieve greater efficiency but also to respond to the new ways in which assets will be shared and occupied.

The benefit of the work and activity of the WMPA is not solely restricted to the West Midlands with the existence of the National Improvement & Efficiency Partnership for the Built Environment providing a network for each of the nine RIEPs to plug into and share learning emerging from innovative work in different regions and support the individual initiatives of the 11 Total Capital pilots.

The critical point to appreciate, given the urgency and pressure for financial savings, is the relatively fixed, long term nature of property and the consequential impact this has on the timescales for realising benefits. However, the imperative to shape up and embark on that journey, a journey made more effective through collaboration, has not been lost on the West Midlands and this is where the orchestration and facilitation work of the WMPA is proving invaluable.

‘The Way Forward’ can be downloaded at www.westmidlandsiep.gov.uk/WMPA.

For more information on this exciting project contact Martin Forbes - mforbes@westmidlandsiep.gov.uk.

Tags : Asset management, property, efficiency savings

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