bulletin
Room for improvement? Managing your property assets effectively
8 October 2009
With the Audit Commission’s Room for Improvement report, and
subsequent guidance on good practice in strategic asset management
published earlier this year, it is more important than ever for
councils to be thinking about consistent and effective strategic
approaches to the management of property assets.
The Commission’s June 2009 report, ‘Room
for improvement: strategic assessment management in local
government’, examined the barriers and challenges faced by
councils wanting to achieve a better strategic management of
property with six case studies forming the basis of the good
practice guidance. More recently, the briefing, ‘Room
for Improvement: a briefing for elected members on managing land
and buildings’, took things one step further by focusing its
attention on providing practical advice to elected members on
reviewing the management of property assets within their own
councils.
The August briefing is designed to assist members in assessing
how well their council is performing by encouraging members to:
- Challenge their council’s approach to managing properties
- Scrutinise the decisions made and the processes followed to
make them
- Review the approach to management of property assets and the
quality of the information available
- Assess how far their councils are meeting the Commission’s
recommendations
Set in the context of the severe challenges that council’s face
in balancing their property assets to ensure that services are
improved, environmental and equality legislation requirements are
met and that they are offering decent productive working for staff,
whilst finding ways of making efficiency savings and providing good
value for money, councils may now feel a surge of member focus on
these issues.
It seems clear that one of the key focuses will be how robust
the management information and how reliable the property data held
by councils is. Without reliable management information and data on
the properties held, councils will struggle to make informed
decisions about what to do in relation to their property assets to
meet the challenges.
We act for many local authorities and private clients and
understand that effective management of property assets is an
important part of your business. As part of this, we have developed
‘Tracker’, an online property management system, designed to put
you in control of your property assets in a simple,
straightforward, easy to use manner. Tracker provides you with
immediate and secure access to key information about your property
interests. With no annual maintenance charge, and just a one off
set up fee, Tracker helps you to manage your budgets, whilst
allowing you to protect your assets by ensuring that unexpected
costs are kept to a minimum and opportunities for revenue are
maximised moving forward.
If you would like to learn more about Tracker, or the ways we
are working with other clients to improve and advise on the
management of their property assets, please contact our team.
talk to us
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Dominic Swift
0161 242 1303
Partner and Head of Public sector and Property
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The content of this bulletin is provided for the purposes of
general interest and information. It contains only brief summaries
of aspects of the subject matter and does not provide comprehensive
statements of the law. It does not constitute legal advice and does
not provide a substitute for it.