Recommendation 7

The Department told us that it has the key elements of a strategy, and that the DEO Portfolio is the major component of this. The Portfolio, however, only covers the UK built estate. The Department could not demonstrate that it has a coherent, comprehensive strategy to deliver necessary reforms of its whole estate and to manage all related estate initiatives.8 Instead, it has a plethora of estate initiatives, such as the Future Accommodation Model for improving service personnel accommodation, which will affect the DEO Portfolio once the Department has decided whether or not to proceed. The reform of the reserve, training and overseas estates remains outside the Department’s estate optimisation plans, with the Department instead having undertaken separate reviews of each in recent years, further illustrating its disjointed approach.9 Slow progress in rationalising the estate