Conclusion 8

About two-thirds of the tenants that NHS Property Services inherited in 2013 did not have rental agreements in place and therefore it has been retrospectively trying to agree leases with occupiers already in situ. NHS Property Services told us that it has sought to get more agreements in place by simplifying them and by issuing 3,500 non-binding summaries of the main features of the lease arrangements.10 NHS Property Services has put in place over 1,750 new occupancy agreements of various forms over last few years. However, because of churn in the tenants that occupy its buildings, by April 2019, only 30% of its tenants had rental agreements in place.11 NHS Property Services acknowledged this not where it wants to be and that without these rental agreements in place, it is difficult to manage those properties effectively.12