Public Sector Disposals - Could the NHS Estate Juggler be at his limit?

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.