Estate governance fails at the joins. A site manager fixes what is in front of them. An estates lead manages a programme. A headteacher raises what stops a child learning. A committee reads a report. A board receives it. Each of them is doing their job, and the organisation can still be unable to say who decided what, or whether anyone checked. This article sets out one map with two ends: what each level of the organisation should be asking, and what each level should be doing, so that the two can be read together.

Why one map?

Because the two conversations are usually held separately. Governance work asks what the board should know and how it knows it. Operating model work asks who does what, in what order, and where it is written down. When they are held apart, the board can receive assurance about a process nobody actually runs, and the estates team can run a process nobody at board level has ever tested. Held together, the board's questions become the tests the operating model has to pass.

What should each level be asking?

These are the questions each level should be able to answer, in its own terms. They are not questions to be asked of someone else for effect.

  • The trust board or governing body: how do we know the estate is safe, suitable, inclusive and improving, and could we evidence that if challenged?
  • The committee that receives estate assurance: what evidence supports that assurance, who tested it, and what exceptions exist?
  • The governance professional: can we show that challenge, scrutiny and decisions took place, and where?
  • The chief executive or headteacher: are the estate arrangements delivering what the board expects, and does the environment let every pupil access learning?
  • The estates lead or school business manager: how are we managing and improving the estate, and are resources aligned to the priorities?
  • The local governing body, where there is one: what is happening on this site that the trust board needs to know?
  • The site team: what needs attention today to keep the school safe and open, and who do I tell?

What should each level be doing?

Four questions test any estate event: who is accountable, who is responsible, who is consulted, and who is informed. Applied to the events that recur on every estate, they produce the operating model.

  • A statutory inspection finds a defect. Responsible: the site team records it and the estates lead assigns the work. Consulted: the contractor and, where the defect touches a risk assessment, the person who owns it. Informed: the headteacher, and the committee at its next meeting if the defect is open beyond an agreed period. Accountable: the responsible body, through whoever holds the estate on its behalf.
  • A condition survey lands. Responsible: the estates lead reads it against the asset management plan and records where the two disagree. Consulted: finance, on what can be funded; headteachers, on what stops learning. Informed: the board, which sees the prioritised list and the reasons. Accountable: the board, which adopts the plan.
  • A parent raises an accessibility barrier. Responsible: the SENCO records the need and the estates lead assesses the adaptation. Consulted: the pupil, the family and the site team, as the DfE's guidance asks. Informed: the governing body or local governing body, and the accessibility plan. Accountable: the responsible body under the Equality Act 2010.
  • The annual return is due. Responsible: the named person compiles the answers. Consulted: whoever holds each document the return asks about. Informed: the board, which sees the answers before submission. Accountable: the responsible body, whose self-declaration it is.
  • The inclusion strategy is drafted. Responsible: the headteacher and SENCO. Consulted: the school business manager and the estates lead, on which barriers are about the building. Informed: the accessibility plan and the estate strategy, so they can change with it. Accountable: the board, which scrutinises it.

Every cell in that table is a decision an organisation can make in an afternoon. What it cannot do is leave the cells blank and assume someone has filled them in.

Why do accountability routes differ by sector?

In an academy trust, the trust board is the responsible body. It may delegate operational matters and aspects of decision-making, but it retains overall control and accountability, and the Academy Trust Handbook 2026 restates the expectation that trusts manage their estate strategically and effectively.

Local governing bodies do not usually approve estate strategies or authorise capital programmes, but they hold local intelligence the trust board cannot get from a central report: accessibility barriers, SEND accommodation pressures, suitability problems, staff concerns. Assurance that flows only from the estates lead to the board misses that.

In a maintained school, the governing body is the strategic accountable body, but responsibility for particular estate and Equality Act matters is divided between the governing body and the local authority according to the school's category. The local authority is the responsible body for the estate, holds the accessibility strategy for its schools, and takes evidence from officers, schools and governing bodies to plan sufficiency and investment. Governing body minutes that record estate challenge are part of that evidence.

In either sector, the distinction should be written down. A scheme of delegation, or its maintained equivalent, that only sets spending thresholds has not done this.

What should the scheme of delegation say?

At minimum, who does each of the following:

  • adopts or approves the estate strategy and the asset management plan
  • scrutinises the inclusion strategy and the accessibility plan, and their estate implications
  • reviews condition, compliance and strategic estate risk
  • determines investment priorities
  • receives local intelligence from schools and local governing bodies
  • escalates concerns, and to whom
  • evaluates whether an adaptation or an investment made the difference intended
  • signs the annual return

If the governance documents do not answer those questions, accountability is operating through habit rather than design.

Common questions

Our estate strategy sits with the trust board. Does the local governing body have any role? Yes, unless the scheme of delegation says otherwise. It does not own the strategy. It helps inform and assure it: escalating local risks, raising accessibility and suitability concerns, and testing whether the trust's assumptions match what happens on the site.

Who signs the annual return? The responsible body declares it. Who compiles it is an operating model decision; who is accountable for it is not.

Does mapping who does what need an adviser? No. It needs a table, an afternoon, the people who actually do the work in the room, and the honesty to leave a cell blank when nobody holds it. The blank cells are the finding.

Where does inclusion fit? As one of the recurring events, with the same four questions. The estate end of an inclusion strategy is a suitability question, and suitability already has an owner in most organisations. The join needs a name, not a new post.