Hampshire County Council

Buildings, Land and Procurement Panel Item

19 October 2004

Strategy for the Built Estate - Progress Report

Report by the Director of Property, Business and Regulatory Services

How the conclusion in this report fits with the Corporate Strategy

This scheme will impact on the delivery of the following Corporate Aims:

Aim 1 - maximising life opportunities - by providing a good quality and well maintained built estate for the community to enjoy.

Aim 2 - stewardship of the environment - by ensuring the built estate is well maintained and provides an environment in which people want to live.

Aim 5 - improving services - by providing good quality buildings that enable improved service delivery.

1

Summary

1.1

The strategy and key objectives for the current year relating to the built estate were confirmed by the Panel at its meeting in March and approved by the Executive Member for Policy and Resources on 8 April 2004. The purpose of this report is to review progress against the management framework for Property Services which was established as part of the March report and to consider any other strategy issues that are emerging.

2

Introduction

2.1

The strategy is the principal means by which the County Council manages its priorities with regard to asset and maintenance liabilities. The objectives in the strategy, identified in Appendix 1, provide the framework against which the revenue, capital and NDS funds are determined.

3

Strategy and Planning

3.1

It has already been agreed that a longer-term view, over three years, should be adopted in the planning and implementation of the various programmes. This approach supports schools in timing the deployment of their devolved funds, which more often than not need to be timed to coincide with landlord and NDS contributions to wider improvement projects, and for maximum impact and value.

3.2

The report on a recent survey of primary schools, later on the agenda, highlights their desire to see a quicker response and earlier start to locally funded projects. Establishing longer term planning horizons is beneficial in helping to address this point.

3.3

The report later on the agenda, dealing with budget issues, identifies the potential financial pressures on the capital budgets over the course of the next three years. These pressures are likely to present themselves at a time when Government funding is potentially reducing. This is a further indication that a longer-term view will be required to match expenditure with liabilities.

4

Programme Management

4.1

The detailed budget distribution for 2004/05 was approved by the Executive Member on 8 April 2004. This year's allocation together with indicative allocations to 2007/8 are given in the table below:

4.2

Revenue Expenditure

The bulk of the budget, over 60%, is committed to planned engineering servicing and maintenance and forms the most significant part of the Service Level Agreement with schools. Each year as part of the engineering term contracts around 4,000 items of mechanical and electrical equipment, including gas safety checks, fire alarm installations, catering equipment, intruder alarms and ventilation systems are serviced. In addition, more than 17,000 breakdowns, system failures and call-outs are attended to in an average year. Only 27% is spent on reactive maintenance such as roof leaks and vandalism. The continuation of major capital programmes such as the SCOLA recladding is having the impact of reducing maintenance liabilities, specifically external redecoration and repairs.

4.3

NDS funding (including the 2004/05 allocation and fees) has been allocated towards the following types of work:

4.4

As demonstrated in the above table, the impact of NDS funding is significant by dealing directly with many of the most significant liabilities along with wide coverage across school sites.

4.5

Some of the outcomes from the NDS investment include:

· completion of the Ballard heater programme

· 70% of SCOLA 1 buildings fully reclad

· major framework contract established for remaining flat roof covering at schools

· automatic fire detection at all secondary schools by the end of August 2005

· major programme of external works completed

· replacement programmes being developed for major engineering components, including boiler plant and electrical systems.

5

Future Planning and Key Issues for Member Consideration

5.1

The diagram in Appendix 1is perhaps the most useful shorthand means of considering the breadth and depth of the strategy. In recent years significant resources have been redeployed from core maintenance activities to support:

(a) DDA initiatives

(b) Fire Management Programmes

(c) Health and safety projects

5.2

In addition, in 2003/04 and 2004/05, resources have been redeployed (about £500,000) in each year to support improvements in Libraries and Discovery Centres. The net result is that our core programmes, outside of the Education sector have had less impact on future liabilities.

5.3

Members can see from section four above that it will be important to plan for a potential reduction (or a complete removal) of NDS resources in 2006/07. Up until then there are some specific pressures on funding from within the capital repairs budget:

· support to specific capital projects could be significant over the next 18 months (particularly for Education, Recreation & Heritage and Social Services)

· capital repairs and maintenance associated with the existing homes in the Enhance Project

· further fire precautions works

· maintaining the momentum behind access improvements.

5.4

From 2006/07 and depending upon future Government announcements on schools it would seem prudent to:

· continue to stretch and plan the programmes over longer (more than one year) time scales

· develop the capacity to carry forward resources to meet "peaks" in expenditure

· (unusually) consider how capital repair budgets could be enhanced to match future liabilities in the estate.

5.5

The foregoing takes no account of the pressures that will come from trying to get out of long term issues for office accommodation (e.g. dilapidations), support to Ashburton Court redevelopment and the speed with which the IT infrastructure that supports property requires to be replaced.

6

Policy Management and Improvement

6.1

Corporate Risk Assessment for the Built Estate

A detailed report on progress against the implementation of the Corporate Risk Assessment and an update on current performance using the previously agreed `traffic light' system appears later on the agenda. Once again significant work has been done to improve safety in particular.

6.2

DDA and Access

The Best Value Performance Indicator measures the percentage of buildings open to the public in which all public areas are suitable for and accessible to disabled people. The County Council is ranked top authority for this year with a BVPI of 74% which exceeded the previously agreed target by 4%. The target for 2004/05 is 75%. The risk of potential claims is much higher now that the DDA has come fully into effect. Good progress has been made with the implementation of a twin-track audit and improvement strategy, with 53% of all public buildings having received physical improvements. A progress report appears later on the agenda.

7

Performance Review

7.1

Services to Schools

While the department has been collecting customer views and publishing performance data for many years it had never conducted independent research among schools. It therefore engaged Lynn Miller Associates to undertake face-to-face and telephone research initially amongst the Primary schools during the early part of the last school term. The research was informed by a series of face-to-face discussions with Headteachers and covered satisfaction with the current service and ideas for service improvements and developments. The outcomes, which are discussed in more detail in the report on services to schools, provide the department with the opportunity to make improvements and to align its services to support the needs of schools. The following will form the basis of an improvement agenda:

· refocused Management Partnership meetings with regular follow-up and feedback on actions

· best value procurement and other arrangements to speed up implementation

· review of communication channels and consideration of the role of the customer contact centre

Local Performance Indicators

7.2

A review of performance in all areas against a set of previously agreed local performance indicators is detailed in Appendix 2 Once again comparison with a range of indicators demonstrates good overall performance which is improving year on year in areas such as customer satisfaction and health and safety.

7.3

The performance indicators in Appendix 2 have been developed over a number of years. They include both national measures, relating to procurement and asset management and BVPIs, and local measures, and incorporate the measurement of outputs, together with qualitative and quantitative performance measures. High levels of customer satisfaction overall are confirmed by the feedback received at the completion of projects. The indicators relating to procurement show current performance to be good when compared to overall industry results. Improving Health and Safety performance remains a strong focus not just for the department's staff, but also for partner organisations, particularly contractors.

Recommendation

1.

That the Buildings, Land and Procurement Panel advises the Executive Member for Policy and Resources that the update to the Strategy for the Built Estate be approved and, in particular the importance of considering how in the medium to longer term, liabilities are matched by future resources.

Performance Indicator

Performance for

2003/04

Target performance

2004/05

% of total work Planned

Reactive

75

25

Planned 75%

Reactive 25%

Risk Management performance for the built estate

Red 0%

Amber 50%

Green 50%

Red 0%

Amber 42%

Green 54%

Customer complaints

68

Reduce by 10%

Customer compliments

158

Increase by 10%

Response times to letters and e-mails (based on sample exercise)

10 days

Creditor payments made within 30 days

90%

Access for Disabled (BVPI)

74%

75%

Departmental performance for

customer feedback

Excellent/Good

89%

2% improvement

Annual Management cost per sq meter (Operational Property)

£3.55 m²

£3.40 m²

Cost predictability - percentage of projects completed within +/- 5% of approved cost

67%

Increase by 10%

Time predictability - percentage of projects completed within +/- 5% of approved programme

83%

Increase by 5%

Contractor performance -

customer feedback

Excellent/Good

81%

2% improvement

Total number of safety incidents reported relating to contractors

8% of site reviews

Reduce by 5%

Engineering Term Contract

Performance - % of response times within 4 hours

Engineering Term Contract

Performance - % of total

servicing programme achieved

100%

Maintenance costs per m²

£10.26 m²

Energy Consumption

With recent changes to corporate IT systems, some year-on-year performance information is now unavailable. This position is being addressed.

Carbon Dioxide Emissions

Water Consumption

933,000m²

Purchase of `green' electricity

14.5GWh

15CCL exempt

32 GWh by end 2005

% of projects with zero accident incident rate

100%

100%

Construction cost - change compared with one year ago

-1.7%