Working for a new public sector
Client this week has made me realise how wildly different Public Department’s
methods and resources are for the disposal of public land and property assets.
Whilst NHS Estatecode policy
clearly sets out the requirement for NHS land & property assets to be sold
at best value with the benefit of planning consent for the most valuable
purpose, when it comes to finding the money to actually go and get these
planning consents, many Trusts just are not willing to make that spend or even
to allocate resource to explore potential. From experience I have found that high
level decision making in NHS Trusts is often led by Senior Clinicians or former
clinicians whom have graduated to senior roles, and they very much tend to
prioritise financial resource to those matters that are immediately patient
facing. Spending money to obtain planning consents on property that is surplus
is not something they will readily consider – despite the recommendations of
Estatecode. Could it be something to do with the quality of the business cases
that are put before them? Or is it just strategic Estates Management (other
than capital projects) not being recognised as something that is important to Trust
operations?
I’m finding that some Councils
are quite different when it comes to disposals – they tend to sell requiring
the best financial value and they will sell surplus sites fairly quickly. I see
some parallels with the approach taken by the Defence Infrastructure
Organisation, in that there is a keen reliance on the use of consultants and
agents for decision making. This can be
a good and a bad thing – but probably more good than bad. There also seems to be a much closer
relationship between Council Land & Property Managers and the respective
Local Planning Authority than NHS counterparts.
I am noting that quite often the
Councils have had the aforethought and resource to nominate land for planning
allocations considerably in advance of any actions for disposal or formal declaration
as surplus. In comparison, Estates personnel in NHS Trusts are often too
busy covering off ERIC returns, Capital Projects, general Compliance issues and
trying to control who is using what in their buildings -and they just haven’t got the time to
strategically plan their Trust’s estate in terms of Town & Country
Planning. Indeed, I’ve found that it is
not unusual for NHS Trust’s to make arrangements and undertake capital
development without planning consents. Nobody has the time! The main offenders being
car park expansions, locating temporary buildings and changes of use within
buildings.
A few years ago I was working for
a large Acute NHS Trust which owns considerable land holdings, perfectly ripe
for residential development. At the time, the Trust had no planned future use
for around 70% of the land and speaking to a Housing Association colleague down
that neck of the woods, this land has still not been offered up for disposal
and also remains unallocated in planning terms. Due to numerous changes in
management at the Trust- in both Estates and senior Trust management, I suspect
that no one in house has had much time to think strategically (other than
decisions for Capital development / refurbishments of clinical areas) and, I
suspect, nobody likely answered any of the ‘exploratory’ emails from the HCA,
who have been sniffing round for surplus / soon to be surplus public sector
land for some time.
In recent years, Estates resource
in the NHS has seems to have been stripped to the bare basics to achieve
savings targets and this fact together with increasing patient demands on NHS
Estate, the steady increase of HTM standards, the need to closely manage PFI
contracts (or pay the price!) and a revolving door of service providers due to
changes in NHS Commissioning means that NHS Estate departments are just far too
busy to truly stand back and identify/ manage surplus land effectively.
Ask any NHS Estates Directors and
they will tell you quite genuinely that they get 200+ emails a day as well as
relentless phone calls. The first thing
they ask themselves when prioritising workload is ‘is any one going to die?’
Strategic land planning is way down the list!
Clearly this flies in the face of
Government ambitions given the ‘call for public sector sites’ to be brought
forward to help the Housing Crisis, but this could be throwing yet another ball
at a juggler at his limit. I suspect the ball will be ignored.