Hampshire County Council

Buildings Land and Procurement Panel

Item

2nd April 2008

The Management and Condition of the Temporary Building Stock

Report of the Director of Children's Services

and Director of Property, Business and Regulatory Services

1

Introduction and summary

1.1

Historically, when the numbers of temporary buildings were high, the Panel received regular reports relating to strategies for the removal of these units from County Council sites. The purpose of this report is to review current strategies to manage and control the number of temporary buildings on the County Council's sites.

1.2

Mention is made in the report about hired units. However, the report primarily covers information about the number and condition of temporary buildings that the County Council owns. It also outlines the strategies in place to remove units from site or to replace them with permanent accommodation.

1.3

· The information given in the report is complete up to the end of the March 2007. The data concerning the inspection programme and changes in the stock for the financial year 2007/08 is being reviewed and will be included in any future update reports.

2

The Number of Temporary Buildings

2.1

The ongoing aim of the County Council has been to minimise the number of temporary buildings on its sites. Where affordable opportunities arise temporary buildings are often replaced with permanent accommodation if there is an ongoing need for the facility. In this way the County Council provides good quality core accommodation for its operations.

2.2

Historic benchmark information relating to the number of temporary buildings can be seen in the various reports to the County Council's committees. See Table 1 below. Overall, a 66% reduction in the number of temporary buildings occurred between 1990 and 1997 with a further 50% reduction of temporary buildings over the last 10 years.

Table 1 - Historic Information Relating to the Number of Temporary Buildings

Committee

Report Date

No. of Temporary Buildings

Buildings & Contracts Panel

April 1990

1,093

Buildings & Grounds Panel

October 1995

467

Buildings Grounds & Contracts Panel

October 1997

303

2.3

Table 2 below provides a more recent comparison and distribution of the number of temporary buildings owned/managed by the County Council between 2003/04 and 2004/07. The present number of temporary buildings represents an overall reduction of 86% when compared with the number of buildings that prevailed in 1990. The major investment programmes around the `Schools Age of Transfer' as well as the Local Government Re-organisation in the 1990's accounted for a large proportion of this reduction. Nevertheless the reduction of over 900 temporary buildings in a 16 year period must represent an exceptional level of achievement and performance by the County Council.

·

Table 2 - Distribution of Temporary Buildings

Location

2003/04

2006/07

Community Schools and Education Centres

157

107

Voluntary Aided Schools

1

8

Foundation Schools

0

4

Non Schools Properties

17

24

In Storage

3

6

Totals

178

149

2.4

The units at the voluntary aided schools listed would not be the responsibility of the County Council to replace. They are shown in the schedule however, where these schools currently buy the Property Services Service Level Agreement (SLA) for revenue repairs and maintenance.

3.

The Management Regime for Temporary Buildings

·

3.1

The Asset Strategy of the County Council has been to focus its resources on the improvement and repair of the core building stock and generally to keep expenditure levels on temporary buildings to a minimum where appropriate. This basically translates into a `wind and watertight' policy for maintaining temporary buildings. This has to be seen in the context of an AMP backlog of repairs and maintenance for core buildings of nearly £0.5billion.

3.2

The asset strategy for the temporary building stock is complimented by regular risk assessment of the structural condition of the buildings, by means of an inspection regime which ensures the buildings remain safe to occupy.

The frequency of the inspections is in itself a risk based approach. The poorer the condition of the building the more frequently they are inspected. The frequencies are as follows.

Condition of the building

Frequency of structural inspections in months

Very poor

3

Poor

3

Fair

12

Good

30

3.3

The condition categories above are assessed based on the criteria shown in Appendix 1. These criteria are related to the structural integrity of the buildings as opposed to their general appearance and state of repair. The inspections are carried out by structural engineers and any recommendations for remedial works are actioned as part of the Corporate Risk Assessment process.

·

3.4

Modern temporary buildings that from time to time continue to be purchased are low maintenance buildings, the external walls being clad with metal sheet, metal doors and UPVC windows. These new buildings are expected to give rise to limited levels of maintenance during the first 20 years of their life.

4.0

The Condition of the Temporary Building Stock

·

4.1

The output from the last round of structural inspections of the temporary building stock is shown in the table below. The table compares the latest condition information against known data in 2003/04 for benchmark purposes.

Classification

2003/04

No. of buildings

2006/07

No. of
buildings

%

Increase (+)/
Decrease (-) in No of buildings

Very Poor

25

5

-80

Poor

36

23

-36

Fair

53

62

+17

Good

64

59

-8

Totals

178

149

-17

5.0

Replacement and Removal Strategies

·

5.1

Section two of this report refers to the extensive work that has been undertaken to remove and replace temporary classrooms across the county. The majority of the replacement projects have been funded from NDS allocations. However, due to pressures necessitated by the reduction in the future years' NDS allocations, there is no provision for replacement projects beyond the 2007/08 programme. This will be reviewed through the monitoring of the Children's Services capital programme. The continuing need for temporary classrooms is also closely monitored against schools' forecast numbers on roll and removed as and when numbers allow.

6.

Approximate Replacement costs

6.1

Detailed in Table 5 below are the approximate costs of replacing the temporary buildings owned by the County Council. The costs are significant and are given for indicative purposes only. There is not a recommendation in this report that funds should be made available for such programmes or that replacement accommodation is possible or necessary for all of these buildings. The information is provided to serve as an illustration of the approximate level of investment that would be required should new accommodation be provided.

·

Table 5 - Approximate Costs of Replacing Temporary Buildings

Condition

No. of Buildings

floor area of buildings m2

Indicative replacement cost - new temporary buildings
£'000

Indicative replacement cost - permanent new build

£'000

very poor

5

646

450

2,000

poor

21

2400

1,600

 7,000

fair

61

5875

3,900

 17,700

good

54

6920

N/A

 N/A

Totals

141

15841

£5,950

£26,700

·

7.

· Temporary Buildings on Hire

·

7.1

· In addition to owning temporary buildings, the County Council manages a number of buildings which are hired. Whilst the hiring agreements come with some limited repairing liabilities, the units would normally only be hired for relatively short periods, up to 4 years, and not require any significant investment over and above the hire cost itself. Beyond 4 years it is generally more economic to purchase the buildings.

·

7.2

· As hired buildings would normally be supplied to site as new units and in a good condition there is no requirement to include them in the inspection regime detailed above.

·

7.3

· The main use for hired temporary buildings is to allow decanting of building occupants during capital buildings projects or to deal with short term peaks in pupil numbers etc.

·

7.4

· The numbers of units on hire at the end of March 2007 was 36. Five of these have since been purchased and will be moved to the inspection programme and purchased schedule for 2007/08 for the purposes of reporting.

·

8.

Summary and Conclusions

·

8.1

· The number of owned temporary buildings on Hampshire County Council's sites has reduced significantly over the past 18 years. In 1990 there were 1093 buildings, in 1995 there were 457 buildings and as at the end the last full financial year there were 149 buildings.

·

8.2

The current number of temporary buildings represents around 2% of the County Council's core stock of buildings. It would not seem unreasonable that the County Council retained between 1% and 2% of its building stock as temporary units to allow for future flexibility of use and need. It should however remain an objective for the County Council to replace the poor and very poor condition temporary buildings with either new temporary or permanent building solutions. It is likely that the current number of temporary buildings will form a base level of units that will remain on County Council sites. This base level will be the result of a number of factors including

· The levels of funding available for the construction of permanent replacement accommodation

· Short term fluctuations in need such as temporary peaks of pupil numbers in particular areas

· Difficulties in constructing permanent accommodation on some sites

· The need for some temporary accommodation to facilitate capital building projects

8.3

· Management strategies are in place to ensure the buildings remain safe to occupy.

·

8.4

· The buildings are regularly reviewed to identify opportunities to remove surplus units and to provide permanent replacements where funding can be identified.

·

8.5

Units that reach the end of their useful life will be replaced with new temporary accommodation where they are not surplus to requirements and permanent accommodation cannot be provided.

LINK(S) TO CORPORATE STRATEGY

Yes

No

Hampshire safer and more secure for all

Maximising well-being

Enhancing our quality of place