What Does the Competency Framework Say About Governance Responsibilities for the Estate, and What Does That Mean for a Board?

Boards that encounter the Estate Management Competency Framework for the first time often assume it is addressed to the estates team. It describes what estate managers need to know and do, so it must be an operational document. That reading misses a significant portion of what the framework actually requires. Several of the activities specified at Level 3 and Level 4, the Manager and Strategic levels, are explicitly about governance: what information the board receives, how it is produced, who is responsible for ensuring the board understands its role, and what accountability structures govern the whole arrangement.

What Governance Activities Does the Framework Specify?

Function 2 of the framework, Planning and Organising Estate Resources, includes a sub-function titled Implementation of Governance Responsibilities for the Estate. At Level 4, the Strategic level, this sub-function requires the individual to lead on establishing and overseeing the governance rules and procedures through which the organisation's objectives are met, to take full responsibility for compliance with governance arrangements, and to assign roles, responsibilities, and levels of authority to appropriate personnel.

Function 1, Strategic Estate Management, includes a sub-function titled Engagement with Senior Leadership and Governing Body. At Level 4, this requires leading on ensuring senior leadership and governing body are aware of their responsibilities and role in managing the estate, leading presentations and engagement sessions with leadership on key estate needs and requirements, and managing engagement with and reporting to senior leadership and governing body to ensure their requirements are met.

These activities sit at the interface between the executive estates function and the board. The Level 4 individual is accountable not just for managing the estate, but for ensuring the governance architecture around the estate functions correctly. That is a material observation for any board that has not satisfied itself that this function is being performed.

What Does This Mean for Boards Specifically?

The framework creates an obligation that runs in both directions. The Level 4 estate practitioner is required to ensure that governing boards are consulted on estate matters in accordance with organisational planning and investment decision-making processes, and to ensure senior leadership and governing body are aware of their responsibilities and role. But the board cannot discharge its own accountability obligations solely by waiting for that briefing to arrive. It needs to know what it should be receiving and to ask for it when it does not appear.

The organisations I support through assurance preparation and board development tend to exhibit one of two failure modes in this area. The first is an estate function that does not effectively translate technical information into governance-ready reporting, leaving the board with insufficient information to challenge or decide. The second is a board that has not asked the right questions because it does not know what information it is entitled to expect. The framework describes what should be flowing between the executive estates function and the board. A gap in either direction is a governance failure that the framework makes identifiable and addressable.

How Does the Annual Skills Assessment Connect to the Framework?

The estate management standards require, at Level 1, that the annual governors' or trustees' skills assessment includes detail of skills and expertise in estates management. This requirement is often interpreted narrowly as asking whether any board member has a property or construction background. The framework suggests a richer interpretation.

The governance engagement activities at Level 3 and Level 4 require board members who can receive estate information, apply meaningful challenge, and take accountability for strategic decisions about the estate. That requires a baseline of estates literacy at board level: not operational expertise, but sufficient understanding of the governance responsibilities, the types of decisions that belong at board level, and the information required to make them well. The annual skills assessment is the instrument for identifying whether that literacy exists and for planning what to do when it does not.

What Does the Framework Imply About Reporting Structures?

At Level 3, the Manager level, the framework requires the individual to monitor, collect and assist in producing information for reporting to senior leadership and governing body, and to help develop presentations and reporting of key estate needs and requirements using estate data, the asset management plan, and the priority project list. At Level 4, this responsibility escalates: the individual leads these presentations and manages the engagement with governing body to ensure its requirements are met.

This implies that board reporting on the estate should not be a passive output of the estates function. It should be designed in collaboration with the board, based on the board's own requirements, and reviewed regularly to ensure it continues to give the board what it needs to govern effectively. A board that receives whatever the estates team chooses to produce, and accepts it without specification, is not performing the oversight function that the framework, and GEMS, require.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the Competency Framework apply directly to governors and trustees, or only to estates staff?

The framework is addressed to those with responsibility for overseeing or managing the estate, which the DfE explicitly includes as proprietors, leaders and governors of schools, and charity trustees of academies and academy trusts. The governance engagement requirements at Level 3 and Level 4 describe what the estates executive should be doing in relation to the board, but the board's own accountability for the quality of that engagement, and for ensuring its governance requirements are met, is implicit in the framework's design.

What should a board do if it is not receiving estate reporting that meets the standards the framework describes?

The first step is for the board to specify what it requires. The framework indicates that Level 4 individuals manage engagement with the governing body to ensure its requirements are met. If the board has not specified its requirements, the governance gap starts with the board. A board that does specify its requirements clearly and still does not receive what it needs has an accountability issue to address through the executive.

How does this framework guidance interact with the Annual Return process?

The annual return from autumn 2026 will ask responsible bodies to confirm they are meeting the estate management standards. The governance engagement requirements at Levels 3 and 4 of the Competency Framework underpin the standards. A responsible body that self-assesses as meeting Level 3 or above should be able to demonstrate that the governance reporting and engagement described in the framework is actually happening.

Is governor training on estate management part of the framework's expectations?

The framework specifies at Level 4 that the strategic individual leads on ensuring senior leadership and governing body are aware of their responsibilities and role in managing the estate. Depending on the governance architecture of the organisation, that may include formal training or briefing for board members on estate governance obligations. Governor training on estate management is a recognised mechanism for bridging the literacy gap the annual skills assessment may identify.

What if an organisation does not have a Level 4 individual in post?

The framework acknowledges that the organisation will not necessarily have a person for every level. Where no Level 4 individual is in post, the governance engagement activities at that level may not be being performed. That is a gap the board needs to understand and address, whether through development of an internal candidate, external appointment, or commissioned advisory support that can fulfil the governance engagement function until a permanent arrangement is in place.

Julie Lawson leads the People and Capability domain at The Estates Strategy Partnership.