Recommendation 3

Many departments’ property plans lack the information necessary to manage and maintain their portfolios. Departments are required to prepare Strategic Asset Management Plans (SAMPs) to consider the totality of their assets and document their planned approach to managing maintenance and disposals in the longer term, including documenting any property risks and how they plan to manage and mitigate them. Departments’ SAMPs are currently of varying quality, and different levels of maturity. The Ministry of Defence needs to urgently create a long–term strategic plan to redevelop the service personnel housing estate as part of its SAMP. Departments are also expected to include data from their arm’s–length bodies (ALBs) in individual SAMPs, unless the ALB prepares a separate SAMP. Departments do not have sufficient oversight of some ALBs with large property portfolios and their information does not feed sufficiently into departmental SAMPs. The OGP requires ALBs that have a particular property focus to prepare their own SAMP, for example Homes England and the Government Property Agency. recommendation a. Cabinet Office should perform a regular assessment on the quality of the SAMPs of organisations with major property portfolios and explain what further actions it is taking to improve the quality and coverage of departmental SAMPs. b. The Ministry of Defence should report to the Committee its plan for redeveloping its housing estate and include long–term plans in the departmental SAMP. The plan should also include details on proposed disposals, redevelopment and maintenance.