In September 2009, Improvement and Efficiency West Midlands released a seminal publication that highlighted the considerable revenue savings, capital receipts and carbon reduction that could be achieved from the local government estate across the West Midlands.
‘The Way Forward – Transforming Local Government Property Management’ report has since helped stimulate local authorities across the West Midlands to kick start strategic initiatives to radically change the management and use of their property portfolios.
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‘The Way Forward – Transforming Local Government Property Management’ report was published in September 2009. It represented the output of several months of work by Improvement and Efficiency West Midlands, Local Partnerships, PricewaterhouseCoopers and a pilot group of West Midlands’ authorities.
The core objective was to determine whether greater value could be generated by changing the way the local government property asset base was managed and occupied. The report identified the potential to achieve significant cashable efficiencies and generate substantial capital receipts through greater collaboration and adoption of best practice. Specifically, it outlined how gross benefits of approximately £640m over ten years were achievable within the West Midlands. This included cashable revenue savings of £173m, gross capital returns of £467m, as well as avoidance of spend on backlog maintenance and a reduction in the carbon footprint of 50,000 tonnes per annum.
Since this time and with the continued support and investment by Improvement and Efficiency West
Midlands and Local Partnerships, the sector has undertaken work which by the end of 2013 will have delivered £32m in cumulative revenue savings and set it on course to deliver the target £173m by 2020.
An undoubted contributor to this success has been the work and oversight of the West Midlands
Property Alliance (WMPA), set up as a consequence of ‘The Way Forward’ report to broker increased collaboration and co-ordinate engagement in projects that help the sector respond to the fiscal crisis.
Resource and Support
Improvement and Efficiency West Midlands and Local Partnerships have invested significant resource into the WMPA over the last two years.
Approximately £200k of funding has been committed to specific projects to date via the WMPA while a further £450k has been distributed through other Improvement and Efficiency West Midlands’ funding mechanisms to help authorities with their asset management efficiency work. In total, Improvement and Efficiency West Midlands will have committed £200k to a programme management function and £1.85m to specific asset management projects by March 2013.
The output from the work undertaken by the WMPA, which is structured around the following three themes:
- Knowing where assets are and how they are performing,
- Increasing multi-agency occupancy,
- Deriving efficiencies from Facilities Management,
can be found on the Knowledge Hub website at https://knowledgehub.local.gov.uk/group/westmidlandspropertyalliance along with the agendas and papers for all Executive Board meetings
Results
Pioneering Work
Over the last two years, the fiscal environment has heightened the focus on property as a source of revenue savings and capital, as well as its role as a catalyst for achieving collaborative, place based working amongst local and central public agencies. However, these same financial challenges have also prompted policy and organisational changes across the public sector, particularly in health, that have perversely made it more difficult to drive out the potential value across the regional estate.
Despite this, local authorities across the West Midlands have demonstrated their ability to bring their local partners together to implement the types of changes and innovation demanded by unprecedented budgetary pressures.
A selection of these projects are showcased within the Case Studies section of
'The Way Forward: Transforming Local Government Property Asset Management - Two Years On'.
Financial Benefits
Over the three years to March 2013, local authorities across the West Midlands will have generated between £30m - £40m worth of revenue savings from property asset management. In addition to
this, they expect to have realised in excess of £70m worth of capital receipts. The projects listed in the case study section give a sense of how these figures are being achieved with the cash being reinvested in a number of ways.
The reduction of the corporate costs and overheads that relate to property is helping maintain service provision in areas such as adult social care while capital receipts are filling holes left in capital
programmes caused by reductions or cessation of central government funding for schools, homes and roads. The re-modelling of property estates is also helping drive organisational transformation
programmes that are improving productivity as well as helping to improve customer access and experience.
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