Services and Support

The services on this page are organised around what you are trying to do, not around how the partnership is structured. Every Responsible Body (the trust, governing body, local authority, or proprietor accountable for the estate) can procure one service on its own, in any order, or follow the staged pathway from start to finish. Either way, it starts with a conversation.

Where to start.

The way into everything here is a short, open conversation of fifteen or thirty minutes: where your organisation is, and what you want your estate to make possible. There is no charge and no preparation, and the conversation carries no verdict on your current arrangements. It ends with a clear next step that fits you, whether that is a place on the development programme, one of the fixed-scope engagements below, a single service from the visible menu, or the staged pathway. The pathway itself is described on How We Work.

Book a Conversation: a short introductory conversation, fifteen or thirty minutes, about where your organisation is and where you want your estate to take it.

Three other ways to begin

Alongside the conversation, there are three other ways to begin, each leading to the same support. Each is described by what it helps you do, and each leads on naturally, with no obligation to continue.

The development programme.

Practical estates education for trustees, governors, governance professionals, clerks, school business professionals, executive leaders and estates teams: what good estate management looks like, grounded in the five connected domains of estate management and the DfE framework, delivered by practitioners who also do the work. The programme has its own page.

Explore the development programme: practical estates education for trustees, governors, school business professionals and estates teams.

Fixed-scope engagements.

A small set of low-barrier engagements, each with a fixed scope and a fixed fee, each producing an immediately useful output without creating new work in your schools. Each goes deeper than a self-completed checklist: it works from your documents and your evidence, and says what they would stand up to.

Start with a readiness review: an annual return readiness review, survey commissioning support, or an estate health check.

Briefings, roundtables and listening circles.

The partnership convenes and joins briefings, roundtables and listening circles through trusted networks and established forums, alongside the education estates insight report and podcast-style content. In listening circles, the partnership's main role is to listen. Nothing here is sold: it is where good conversations start, and they go further only if you want them to.

Join us at a briefing, roundtable or listening circle.

The visible menu: nine areas of support

Beneath the pathway sits the menu: the services a Responsible Body can procure directly, in any order, with or without the pathway. It is organised by what you are trying to do. Each area of support opens with the job it does; the services sit beneath it, with the delivery arrangement and the charging shape stated plainly.

1

The documents that run the estate

A well-run estate stands on a defined set of documents, and the DfE guidance expects a Responsible Body to hold them. This area of support produces them with you, from your data and your circumstances, never from a template with your name on it. Each engagement is fixed in scope, and each concludes with a document your board can adopt and a briefing pack to support the decision.

The documents: the estate vision and strategy; the asset management plan; the business continuity plan; the climate action plan; the estates budget; and the health and safety policy. The core documents engagement produces the vision, the strategy and the asset management plan as one connected piece of work rather than three disconnected files, because each depends on the others.

2

Ready for the annual return, all year round

The annual return is light-touch. The assurance behind it should not be. The return reaches school responsible bodies and sixth form colleges, and it is self-declared: what stands behind each answer is the Responsible Body's own evidence, which is exactly why the question worth asking is not what to declare but what you could show.

The full annual return service supports the Responsible Body through the return itself: what each question is asking and what your records show, with a clear route to closing any gaps. Document and evidence library design builds the organised evidence base behind it: one place where the estate's records live, with clear ownership for keeping them current. Readiness handled this way is a by-product of records kept live through the year, never a last-minute rush. The readiness review above is the quick way in; the services here are the fuller work behind it.

3

Statutory compliance, checked and evidenced

A narrow core of estate duty is statutory duties: the duty to have competent persons for health and safety, and the specific statutory duties attached to fire, asbestos, water and other named risks. Around that core, the DfE Estate Management Standards describe what the Department expects a well-run estate to have in place. The two are different in kind, and this area of support treats them differently: the statutory core is checked and evidenced; the wider expectations are assessed and planned.

The compliance schedule audit is the diagnostic: what applies to your estate, and what your evidence actually shows. The master compliance schedule and evidence system is the central record: one schedule of everything the estate must do and evidence, kept live. Around them sit responsible person identification and appointment (so every duty has a named holder who knows they hold it), statutory compliance recovery (for the estate that has found a gap and needs it closed in an ordered, documented way), and the compliance policy framework. Beneath the face sit the statutory service lines themselves: fire safety, asbestos management, legionella and water safety, hazardous substances, the health and safety risk assessment programme, site safety and security, radon, and display energy certificates.

4

Condition, surveys and building management

Conversations about buildings start with knowing their condition, and most of the money an estate will ever spend follows that knowledge. This area of support builds that knowledge and puts it to work.

The proportionate condition baseline gives an organisation with no current condition picture a credible starting point, designed as a first step rather than a major project. The full condition survey programme takes the whole estate to surveyed, evidenced condition data. Structural safety and inspection covers the duties and checks that specific structures attract. Capital investment appraisal and works planning turns condition data into costed, prioritised works. Maintenance strategy and planned maintenance moves spend from reactive to planned. Climate resilience and adaptation planning prepares the estate for the conditions it will face. And condition and building management is available as one continuous service, from the first survey to the day-to-day running of the buildings.

5

Governance and the board

The estate is not simply an operational matter: it is a strategic asset, one of the largest costs an education organisation carries, a significant organisational risk, one of its largest opportunities, and an area of board accountability. Good governance is where that opportunity is made visible and deliberate. It gives a board the means to oversee the four things every leadership team wants from its estate: save money, save time, unlock funding, better environments for children. Better environments include estates that support SEND and inclusion, planned in from the start rather than treated as an afterthought. The instruments boards work to now name the estate as board business: the Academy Trust Handbook 2026 for academy trusts, and the governance guides for the maintained sector. In voluntary-aided and church schools the diocesan body holds a governance and assurance interest in the estate alongside the board, as does the local authority in the maintained sector, and the structures this area of support builds serve that wider governance audience as well. The direction of the DfE framework places growing weight on a board's ability to show effective oversight, informed decision-making and sound assurance. This area of support gives a board the structures that turn that responsibility into working oversight, built around the question a board should be able to answer: how do we know, and could we evidence it if challenged?

The governance framework for the estate sets out where authority sits and how decisions are made and reported. Scheme of delegation drafting writes the estate into the scheme properly. Board reporting and assurance reporting designs reporting so the board receives assurance rather than paper. The external review of governance with an estates lens, and the annual governance health check, test the arrangements from outside. Assurance framework design and internal audit cycle design build the standing machinery. The board estates skills and competency assessment shows a board what capability it holds and what it is missing. Estate risk integration puts the estate's risks on the organisation's risk register in a form the board can challenge. The insurance and risk protection review identifies and evidences the estate risks your organisation carries, so that your own insurance or risk protection arrangements rest on an accurate picture of the estate: it is estate-risk evidence work, and it does not advise on insurance products or on the adequacy of cover.

Governance training is an ESP service led by the partnership's governance lead: governance training for boards, governors and governance professionals on their estate oversight obligations and wider governance responsibilities. The development programme's module for governors and trustees is its programme form; board development at greater depth runs as an engagement in its own right.

6

How your organisation runs its estate

Some of the most persistent estate problems trace back to how the organisation is structured to manage its estate over time, which is what practitioners mean by its operating model. This area of support reviews and designs that deliberately.

The operating model blueprint sets out how estate management should work in your organisation, with an accountability map naming, for every estate task, who does it and who owns it. Service level agreement drafting puts internal and external service relationships in writing. Job description review and design, organisational design for an estates restructure, and cluster and workforce design across multi-site organisations shape the roles and the structure. The contractor management framework covers how contractors are selected, inducted, controlled and reviewed, including the client duties that construction regulations place on you. Estate procurement strategy and support puts method behind what the estate procures.

7

Strategy, funding and financial planning

The estate is one of the largest costs an education organisation carries, and one of its largest opportunities. This area of support is where the four things every leadership team wants from its estate are planned deliberately: save money, save time, unlock funding, better environments for children. Better environments include estates that support SEND and inclusion, planned in from the start rather than treated as an afterthought.

The suitability, sufficiency, utilisation and income review asks whether the estate fits the organisation you are becoming, and whether the space you hold is earning its keep. Funding readiness, strategy and business case support builds funding cases on the estate's own evidence, in the form the evidence-led capital allocation now rewards; the service strengthens cases, and it never promises outcomes. Ten-year strategic capital plan support gives investment a long horizon. Budget cycle integration and cost of occupancy establishes what the estate truly costs to run and builds it into the organisation's budget cycle. The carbon reduction roadmap and climate risk assessment, sustainability criteria for procurement and capital projects, and sustainability leadership across the whole estate make climate work part of estate planning rather than a parallel exercise. The estate accessibility and inclusion service assesses and plans the estate's accessibility and inclusive design, so the estate works for every learner it serves.

8

People, capability and training

Estates capability is a people question before it is a systems question. The law requires competent persons for health and safety; beyond that narrow core, the framework expects capability to be assessed and developed, and this area of support does both.

The estates competency assessment and development service maps your people against the Estate Management Competency Framework and builds the development plan the gaps call for. The mandatory training matrix and competency record keeps training evidenced and current. Induction programme design and succession planning support protect the estate from single points of failure. Development for chairs, governance professionals and clerks, and the estates leadership development pathway, grow the people who will carry the estate next. Estates statutory and compliance training covers the duties themselves. The development programme is the public face of this area of support; these are the engagement-depth services behind it.

9

Systems, data and digital

Proportionate is the discipline of this area of support: the right recommendation matches your scale and maturity, and the advice is solution-agnostic, because the right system is the one that fits your organisation, whether that is our own platform or not.

The systems, digital and BIM review takes a structured look at the systems and data the estate runs on and recommends what fits. Bespoke system development, integrations and data pipelines serve the organisation whose needs have outgrown what is available off the shelf.

Standing capacity: interim and retained estates leadership

Some organisations reach the point where the missing piece is leadership itself: standing, senior estates capacity at strategic level, without a director of estates on the payroll and without the case for hiring one. This tier exists for them.

What you get is a named lead practitioner, accountable to you, whose professional judgement stands behind every deliverable. The retained fee buys a defined block of that practitioner's time in each period, applied to deliverables agreed in advance. Board attendance and site visits are included at a stated number per period; beyond that number they are available and separately charged. Nothing in the engagement is left open-ended, so you always know exactly what capacity you hold.

Behind the named practitioner stands the rest of the partnership: practitioners whose work spans governance, operations, compliance, condition and building management, together with the member practices and the specialist network , and with modern tools carrying the heavy lifting of data processing, analysis and drafting under the practitioner's direction. That is how a deliberately senior, deliberately lean partnership delivers a breadth of work that would once have needed a large department. The judgement is human, named and accountable; the tools do the labour they are suited to.

The work programme is the same method that runs through the staged pathway: know the estate and review compliance, put the governance in place, measure, plan, then run and evidence, applied continuously at the scale of your organisation.

This tier fits larger trusts and colleges with a genuine standing-capacity gap and no in-house strategic estates lead. The conversation will say honestly whether it is the right fit.

Everything else, and where to start

The visible menu is not the whole of the partnership's range. The partnership delivers or commissions the full range of estate services behind the visible menu, scoped through the conversation.

If something here fits, that is a good place to start. If you are not sure what fits, that is exactly what the introductory conversation is for: fifteen or thirty minutes, with no charge and a clear next step at the end, even if that step is nothing at all this year.

Book a Conversation: a short introductory conversation, fifteen or thirty minutes, about where your organisation is and where you want your estate to take it.