The Estates Strategy Partnership

The Estates Strategy Partnership brings together experienced practitioners across every domain of estate management to help education organisations build the governance, operating model, and capability the DfE Estates Strategy requires. Not a product. A partnership.

The only partnership that combines whole-operating-model advisory expertise with a purpose-built estate management platform.

The problem

Every school, trust, and further education provider in England now carries a formal statutory obligation to manage its estate against the DfE Estate Management Standards. From autumn 2026, every Responsible Body (the trust, governing body, or proprietor accountable for the estate) must make an annual return to the DfE confirming alignment with those Standards. The Standards describe a ten-year improvement journey. Most organisations beginning that journey will start at Level 1 or Level 2. Many that believe they have compliance arrangements in place will discover, on examination, that what they have is activity, not assurance: tasks being done, but not evidenced in a way that demonstrates governance and control to the standard the framework now requires. The gap is not a task management problem. It is a governance problem, a people problem, and an operating model problem (how your organisation is designed to manage its estate over time) at the same time. Most organisations address these separately, commissioning different advisers for each dimension, none of whom can see the others' work. Governance sits with one firm, people and capability with another, compliance with a platform, assurance with someone else. No single adviser sees the whole picture. No one is accountable for the connection between them. Even where advisers coordinate, the absence of a shared operating model and a shared evidence infrastructure means the connections between governance, people, compliance, and assurance cannot be made, only described.

How we are different

The platform behind that claim is EstatesBase.

EstatesBase is built around the four DfE source documents: the Education Estates Strategy, the Estate Management Standards, GEMS, and the Estate Management Competency Framework. Not configured to support them after the fact. Designed around them from the outset. No other platform in the sector makes that claim with the same foundation.

The partnership

The partnership is led by Richard Bunting (founder of Compliance Pod, twenty years building estate management software for education organisations across England), Julie Lawson (Chartered Manager and former Chief Operating Officer at multi-academy trusts, now principal of Education Compliance Solutions), and Mel Stokes (governance specialist, External Reviewer of Governance, and founder of Legacy Governance Solutions).

How we work

The partnership works in four stages. The first is a free initial consultation of approximately one hour: a structured discovery session across all five connected domains of estate management, concluding with a clear statement of where your organisation stands, what the Standards require, and where the priority gaps are. That conversation shapes a proposal for a paid assessment and gap analysis in Stage 2, structured against the DfE Standards maturity levels and delivered by the partner or partners best placed for your situation. Stage 3 produces a documented improvement plan: what needs to happen, in what order, owned by whom, and over what timescale. Stage 4 is the ongoing partnership: consultancy, training, governance support, people development, assurance processes, and EstatesBase implementation where appropriate. The DfE Standards describe a ten-year improvement journey. The partnership is designed for that reality.

The DfE regulatory framework

The Estates Strategy Partnership was designed for the reality that the DfE Estate Management Standards describe: a ten-year improvement journey, beginning wherever your organisation is now, requiring governance, people, compliance infrastructure, and assurance to work together. The annual return is the recurring mechanism by which every Responsible Body in England confirms alignment with those Standards.