


With over 30 partners dispersed over the largest OPE programme area in the country, the East Midlands possesses a unique set of ingredients to collaborate for the benefit of a diverse range of communities. Since our last strategy was prepared in 2018, the environment within which public services are delivered has changed dramatically. We have recognised that, for many, work is an activity not a specific building and this has enabled us to challenge traditional beliefs on the nature and location of the workplace. Demand has increased for many public services yet the resources available have not kept pace with rising demand. And we cannot escape the reality of climate change or the ongoing impact of online retailing on our towns and city centres and their high streets.
By working together across the region, public sector partners can simultaneously address these and other challenges by providing more efficient, streamlined and accessible public services.
But it isn’t just about public service delivery. If we get it right, as has been proven by our experience over the last five years, we can act as the catalyst for regeneration, housing growth, place-making, economic development and the creation of a sense of pride in where we live and work.
We have an ambitious vision for the region, and a pragmatic delivery plan. However, we can expect the political and economic environment to change over the coming years. As a result, we will update this strategy as necessary so that it remains current and relevant at all times.
Mike Hill and Paul Wilson
The OPE chairs
Paul Wilson
CEO, Derbyshire Dales District Council Chair of D2 Steering Group
Joanne Brazell
Team Manager, Property Strategy and Information and N2 Strategic Lead
Mike Hill
CEO Gedling Borough Council Chair of N2 Steering Group
Matt Scarborough
East Midlands OPE and Derbyshire
ICS Estates Programme and Partnership Manager
Strategic Lead for the Programme and PMO D2
Janet Scholes
Director of Property, Derbyshire County Council
Programme Host and Strategic Lead
Ian Bennett
N2 East Midlands OPE
Programme ManagerOne Public Estate
To support the aims of the Partnership by providing a future-proofed framework for collaboration between public sector partners across the East Midlands that will be sustained throughout the duration of the strategy.
Nationally, the One Public Estate programme, led by the Office of Government Property and the Local Government Association, has been in existence since 2013 and brings together local and central government to collaborate. The core objective is to support regionally based partnerships of public sector bodies in using their estates collaboratively to help deliver multiple outcomes such as the transformation of public services, securing better value for money from partner property assets, creating new homes, and supporting economic regeneration.
69 regional programme areas have been established across the country, covering combined authority, sub-regional and local authority areas.
Over £100m pa reduced running costs
£600m capital receipts
One Public Estate has delivered + Over 800
Land released for 38,000 new homes
Over 40,000 new jobs
Locally, the East Midlands OPE Partnership was formed in 2016 and comprises over 30 partners from local and central government, higher education, emergency services and the health sector covering the geographical areas of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire which extends to almost 5,000 square kilometres and is the largest OPE programme area in England.
With over 1.6 million residents and a disparate range of communities, geography and socio-economic make-up, the challenges presented are varied. On the other hand, the rich natural and cultural heritage of the region, its excellent transport links, ‘central’ location, and skilled labour force combine to create a unique set of opportunities.
The OPE programme is directly responsible for a wide range of outputs with revenue support providing the trigger for the subsequent delivery of a diverse portfolio of projects across the region.
Cost savings of £6.2m
The partnership has supported the delivery of...
Release of land for over 700 new homes
£3.1m value generated / released
Over 1000 new jobs
It has also successfully secured central government funding in excess of £6 million.
Delivery of the Buxton Health Hub business case bringing together 11 partners to deliver an integrated community hub centred on health facilities but including other public and community service facilities.
Buxton Health and Community Hub
The development of a Community Hub will play an essential part of the transformation of public sector services in Buxton. The development will allow interested organisations to:
• leave outdated and inefficient premises
• expand existing services
• release land for housing regeneration
• move into a new building that will be fit for purpose
• support sector strategies/plans/initiatives, such as the High Peak Local Plan, the Five Year Forward View, the Derbyshire Sustainability and Transformation Partnership (STP), OPE programme and the ‘Better Care Closer to Home’ (21C) programme.
One Public Estate provided the forum to establish and develop the stakeholder interest and the capacity and capability to develop a system wide business case.
The project was funded with one million pounds from the Land Release Fund, supporting the development of 4.83 hectares to create 200 residential units. The site had a particularly challenging topography leading to a development site with a negative GDV. The funding helped to create a viable scheme allowing for works to ease the construction around level changes and designing a road that suits the challenging topography.
The North Midlands One Public Estates Programme supported this successful funding submission, bringing forward a development that has historically been difficult to achieve.
For details of current activity please see Annex C
The OPE programme is also responsible for administering the Brownfield Land Release Fund (BLRF). The fund is targeted at brownfield land owned by local authorities with latent potential to provide housing for local communities, and create jobs while doing so. The BLRF prioritises the re-purposing of underused sites into places where people want to live, and has been used successfully to secure over £4m in capital funding and enable the delivery of more than 700 new homes across the region.
In March 2023, Derby was selected as one of only five geographic areas to test the Place Pilot concept. The Place Pilots offers an opportunity to adopt a place-based approach to strategic asset management and is delivered in partnership between the Office of Government Property and Derby City Council.
The aims of the Place Pilots are to:
• Bring together multiple public estate owners, under joint local and central government leadership, to undertake joint portfolio planning in the context of local needs and ambitions
• Optimise investment by driving efficiency and value across the public estate and better public services by identifying opportunity for colocation, disposals, relocations, land assembly and other multi-portfolio collaboration
• Embed a stronger focus on place into strategic asset management planning by mapping future estate demand alongside key growth and opportunity areas
• Test new approaches and develop recommendations that can be replicated and scaled up to drive future uptake of a place-based approach across departmental and public sector estate strategies and different scale of place.
The local OPE PMO is working closely with Derby City Council to develop three key workstreams:
• Colocation – the ICB are relocating from their current office accommodation in Derby to the Council House
• City centre employment
• Station Gateway – the city of Derby was selected as a location for the headquarters for the Great British Railways (GBR). Derby City Council is embracing the presence of GBR’s HQ as a lever to attract other related bodies from both the public and private sector into the city.
The strategy has been prepared in the context of a changing and challenging environment. This calls for more ambitious and innovative approaches to collaboration while making sure we continue to get the basics right. The environment is characterised by:
• Significant pressure on budgets caused in part by an escalating demand for services
• The continuing transformation of our retail habits impacting on high streets and town/ city centres
• A universal commitment across the public sector to support net zero
• The normalisation of hybrid working resulting in an excess capacity of back-office space
• The publication of Infrastructure Strategies by our two Integrated Care Boards aimed at providing long-term, holistic and systemwide approaches to built infrastructure
• A changing political landscape that will be accompanied by new policy initiatives, programmes and priorities
• A Devolution Deal resulting in the creation of the East Midlands Combined County Authority coupled with a new landscape of Investment Zones and freeports.
Over the life of this strategy, we will experience further shock waves. A critical success factor will be our ongoing resilience to adapt to change and evolve how we work together.
This strategy will ensure that the government estate helps to transform places and services; is better, greener and smaller; and is managed in a professional and increasingly commercial way.
Government Estate Strategy, 2022-30
The vision for the Partnership is to collaborate by design. That means opting for collaborative strategies, initiatives and projects unless there are good reasons to do otherwise. And by opting for collaboration as the default position, we will achieve an incrementally better, greener and smaller estate over the term of the strategy.
A better estate will be:
• More closely align the estate with business needs
• Appropriately located, sized and configured
• Demonstrate fitness for purpose and lower whole life costs
A greener estate will:
• Generate fewer carbon emissions and waste
• Promote biodiversity
• Have sustainability embedded into both design and operation
A smaller estate will:
• Generate day to day revenue savings
• Allow capital tied up in property assets to be released and surplus assets to be re-purposed
• Deliver better value for money.
Transforming our estates, as they become better, greener and smaller, will ultimately allow us to play a major role in the transformation of:
• Services – by providing more accessible, efficient and effective platforms for the delivery of public services
• Places – through regeneration, place-making and leveraging investment by the private sector to deliver regional priorities
• Experiences – of occupiers of our buildings and service users by capturing, understanding and responding to their needs in a systematic manner.
The OPE programme cycle graphic highlights themes from the vision, enablers and targeted outcomes:
Vision
• Better
• Greener
• Smaller
• Transformed services, places and experiences
Supported by enablers
• Convening power
• Micro site
• Shared database
• Programme management
• Active participation
• Governance
• ‘Back to basics’ approach
• Funding
• Wider collaboration
• Commitment
To deliver
• Economic activity
• Financial benefits
• Sustainability
• Dividends for people
• Changes in behaviour
The aim of the Partnership is to bring partners together to work collectively on projects and other initiatives where property assets are used to support service transformation, enable regeneration activity, unlock assets to create new homes, undertake estate rationalisation schemes, and generate capital receipts or new income streams.
Through formal and informal mechanisms, the Partnership has succeeded in building relationships between partners, engendering trust, and realising new opportunities. It has created a climate where collaboration has become a ‘business as usual’ activity.
The Partnership is not, however, a static entity – it will evolve and grow to embrace other partners and support partners in addressing new and innovative collaboration opportunities.
Crucially, the Partnership has developed and will continue to further develop a toolkit to support partners as they take the journey from becoming aware of opportunities through to delivery of targeted outcomes.
The aims of the strategy are multi-faceted and exist to help the Partnership achieve its own aims. They include:
• To acknowledge some of the particular challenges that partners are facing up to and will address over the life of this strategy, and to highlight various areas of opportunity where existing and new partners will work together
• To encourage public sector organisations to take a broad perspective of opportunities to use and share facilities
• To build a consensus among partners on how to work together from the inception of opportunities to their delivery, and encourage new and innovative ways of collaborating
• To enable partners to embed both the principles and practice of property asset collaboration in their corporate and asset management strategies
• To identify the enablers that will bring about efficient and effective collaboration, including an OPE East Midlands Micro Site and a library of good practice and case studies
• To confirm the broad range of targeted outcomes we will help deliver.
Reimagining our estates is a worthy goal but is not an end in itself. We therefore need to plan, manage and measure the chain of events from collaborating on asset management through to creating a positive impact on service delivery, places and people.
The outcomes of effective collaboration will combine a blend of ‘hard’ measures of performance and less tangible outcomes such as changes in the behaviours of partners and the perceptions of service users of the quality of services received. Crucially, the measurement of performance will be evidence-based and undertaken without putting an additional strain on scarce resources by analysing the cost of capturing performance data and weighing it up against the value of the information.
Our portfolio of mechanisms for measuring performance is summarised below.
• Economic activity
• Jobs created
• New homes
• Reuse of surplus or unused sites / buildings
• Footfall on high streets
• Financial benefits
• Capital receipts generated
• Revenue cost savings
• Leverage of investment by private sector
• Sustainability
• Achieving net zero targets
• Floorspace reduction
• Renewable energy generation
• Dividends for people
• User satisfaction with the workplace
• Service user perceptions of the quality of services
• Perceptions of businesses and residents about ‘place’.
creating a positive
Changes in the behaviour of partners will also be tracked to evidence increased levels of trust and constructive relationships between partners. Patterns of behaviour such as those below will be captured:
• Sharing of property asset strategies, schedules of property requirements, details of vacant / surplus space, opportunities and insights that may be relevant to other partners etc
• Sharing core data on estates, particularly relevant for any ‘new’ members of the Partnership such as further and higher education institutions, NHS Trusts, and the MoD
• Generation by partners of ideas for future collaboration
• Commitment of senior level resources to the OPE programme
• Reflection of the vision and aims of the Partnership in corporate and asset strategies of partners
• Adoption of processes to ensure the scope for effective collaboration is explored for all projects and initiatives e.g. mandatory section in estate strategies on collaboration
• ‘Voluntary’ collaboration on opportunities identified within the OPE forum but in relation to which no OPE revenue funding has been secured.
The diagram below shows the key components of the OPE East Midlands governance framework including the interfaces with the health system Infrastructure Strategies, EMCCA and OPE regional representatives.
The ‘arrows’ within the network of forums etc indicate the following:
• Single direction arrows – indicating the provision of guidance, knowledge, or reporting on progress.
• Two-way arrows – indicating collaborative working or a two-way flow of information.
The core purposes of the various ‘tiers’ within the governance framework are indicated either side of the diagram.
The detailed composition and key roles of the various boards and groups, along with their roles, are contained in Annex A. The principal features of our Partnership governance arrangements are summarised below:
• Clear leadership and direction from a Strategic Estates Board (SEB). The SEB is composed of:
- Representative from EMCCA, Office of Government Property and LGA
- Directors of Estates (or equivalent) from Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire County Councils
- Directors of Estates (or equivalent) from a city/ district or borough council from each county
- Representatives from the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire ICBs
- Chairs of the OPE CEO Groups for Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire
• The SEB is informed by the wider governmental and public policy environment
• Steering Groups for Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, with input from the OPE CEO Groups for each county. The Steering Group’s share knowledge and experience with each other
• The PMO is guided and informed by the SEB and regional OPE advisors, and is linked to the ICS Local Estates Forum. It helps to steer, manage and inform the actions of the OPE Steering Groups
• Discreet Project Boards are established for each project, whether or not OPE-funded, and report on progress to the PMO.
While the current strategy maintains separate references to Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, we anticipate that a single, region-wide perspective will increasingly be taken of opportunity identification, project prioritisation, programme governance and presentation of our strategy in action.
Throughout the period covered by the strategy, opportunities will arise for partners to collaborate on one-off or connected projects. While the precise nature of those projects cannot be predicted as we deliver a new Partnership strategy, we can lay the foundations for more frequent and more effective collaboration between partners. In this section, we identify triggers for the identification of opportunities arising from day-to-day activities of partners and a series of planned activities.
‘Business as usual’ opportunities will arise from:
• Sharing of knowledge and opportunities across the partners
• Wider application of locality or place-based reviews
• Securing revenue funding to provide seed corn funding for agreed projects
working together to create a greener estate
‘New’ opportunities will arise from:
• Extending partner representation including those with significant property assets e.g. additional NHS Trusts and HEIs
• Working with ICBs to seize opportunities arising from the roll-out of Infrastructure Strategies
• Collaborative solutions to optimise back-office space
• Working together to create a greener estate by, for example, collaborating on decarbonisation initiatives, sharing green fleet bases, and pooling assets for energy generation
• The convening power, influence and direction from the EMCCA
• The creation and implementation of Investment Zones, Freeports, Growth Corridors and any other nation-wide policies with substantial implications for property.
Achieving the aims of this strategy is reliant upon a series of enablers, and all partners have a role to play in the process of ‘enablement’.
The enablers, presented in more detail in Annex B, include the following:
• The creation of an accessible Micro Site that will act as a portal for case studies and initiatives planned by partners among other things
• A ‘back to basics’ approach that requires partners to share their asset strategies and proposals where collaboration with partners could deliver additional dividends
• A commitment to examine opportunities to work together whether or not a project is revenue funded by OPE
• The mapping of assets to support locality reviews and to trigger collaboration conversations between partners
• The convening power of OPE Boards and EMCCA.
The Partnership delivers a programme focusing on four key themes which underpin the foundations of the wider One Public Estate Programme and Government major estate transformation and infrastructure programmes. The programme has been, and will continue to be, delivered alongside partners in a way that meets the needs of communities and organisational priorities, by delivering a whole system approach based around ‘PLACE’ and ‘Services for Citizens’.
The East Midlands approach provides the Partnership opportunities to work better together and in collaboration to optimise the performance of their land and property to support wider objectives and enable improved service provision and value for money.
Locality Reviews Hubs Programme
Operational Delivery ReviewsIntegration/ Co-delivery of services
Regenerationincluding Housing
Planning to DeliverWork Place
The ambitions of this delivery plan will be supported by the East Midlands OPE Land and Property Charter.
PHRASE
Footfall
The number of pedestrians going into or passing a place, measured over a specific timescale
Hybrid working A method of working whereby workers balance their time between remote working (from home or alternative workplaces) and the employer’s workplace
ICS Local Estates Forum A collective of estates professionals or similar representing the partners within a local health system e.g. health trusts, local authorities, primary care network, NHS Property Services, voluntary sector
Investment Zones, Freeports and Growth Corridors
Infrastructure Strategy
Integrated Care Board
Micro site
Place-making
Whole life costs
Geographic areas within which specific economic regulations will apply (e.g. tax relief) and where the public and private sectors work together to secure investment and economic activity
A long-term plan to transform the estates of partners within an Integrated Care Board to support service plans and better meet the needs of communities
A partnership of health and social care providers that replaced the former Clinical Commissioning Groups in 2022
A branded web page, or small collection of web pages, with a unique website address and featuring a limited degree of content for a very specific target audience
The process of urban design and planning that focuses on the needs of people and communities rather than just the physical outputs such as buildings and other infrastructure
An estimate of the total cost of an asset, such as a building, from its acquisition / procurement, through its day to day operation and periodic refresh, to its ‘end of life’ value when no longer suitable to support service delivery
GOVERNANCE MECHANISM AND KEY ROLE
Strategic Estates Board (SEB)
Role – strategic direction and oversight
Directors of Property of both county councils, and a city, borough or district council within each county; representatives from EMCCA, ICBs, the Cabinet Office and the LGA; and Chairs of the OPE CEO Groups
Promote capturing the vision (collaboration by design) in individual partner corporate asset management strategies
Ensuring strategic links are maintained across the Partnership
Build a consensus and effective linkages across all partners in both counties
Provide strategic direction to guide the Partnership on its priorities and targeted outcomes
Provide oversight on performance of the programme across the region
Ensure integration with relevant priorities, targets and initiatives of EMCCA
Steering Groups (Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire)
Role – governance
Property representatives of partner organisation in each county together with representatives from the Cabinet Office, LGA, DWP, Homes England, NHSE, ICBs
CEO Groups (Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire)
Role - oversight
PMO
Role - governance, assurance and oversight
CEOs of partner organisations in each county
Agree projects to be taken forward aligned to the strategic direction of the Partnership
Procure external support as necessary
Build a pipeline of projects
Share best practice between partners
Raise awareness of emerging issues e.g. new government policies
Monitoring of progress with individual projects
Ensure and demonstrate top level commitment across partners
Ensure consistency across the counties, working together and across boundaries where appropriate
Agree funding arrangements for the PMO
Two full-time Programme Managers, one for each county
Regional OPE advisors
Role - assurance
Project Control Board
Role - project governance and assurance
Integrated Care System Local Estates Forum
Role - engagement
EMCCA
Role - engagement
LGA representatives
Project-specific partner representatives and external advisors as necessary
Strategic estates leads from NHS Trusts and ICB
Foster and develop the OPE networks
Help identify projects that meet the aims of the Partnership, including projects that span the D2 and N2 geographic boundary
Coordinate the development, planning and delivery of projects
Support funding bids
Share best practice from other programme areas
Promote areas of opportunity for new projects
Monitor progress on projects
Ensure delivery of agreed project outputs
Identify specific opportunities at a locality level for collaboration within the health system and between the health system and other partners
Engage with the OPE PMO to raise awareness of the above opportunities in a timely manner
Combined authority strategic PLACE leads and relevant Heads of Service
Promote the OPE vision (collaboration by design) across the region
Ensure the SEB is aware of strategic regional initiatives that can be enabled and supported by collaboration between partners
Convening power
Creation of formal and informal networks to align asset strategies and bring partners together to help deliver the objectives of this strategy. While a key role for OPE programme management, partners also share responsibility to deliver this output. The new EMCCA also has a role to play in bringing together partners to achieve common objectives
Encourage partners to develop shared strategic asset management plan for localities
Expect partners to take proactive steps to work together on projects that have not been awarded OPE revenue support
Micro Site
An accessible portal to include case studies, good practice, project pipeline, partner asset strategies, contact points, guidance on ‘How the NHS works’ (or similar) etc
Shared database
‘Back to basics’ ethos
Raising awareness of opportunities is in part contingent upon the existence of a comprehensive, accurate and accessible shared database. The PMO will encourage partners to update ePIMS and will also use the functionality of SHAPE as a mapping tool to support, for example, locality reviews
Sharing of data and knowledge on issues such as assets in scope, estate-related opportunities, demand for space potentially capable of being met by other partners etc
Develop an OPE EM Micro Site, to be refreshed at least annually
Encourage partners to contribute collateral including detailed case studies based on ‘local’ project, with a link to the LGA virtual library of case studies
Signpost and provide links to documents, guidance etc e.g. ‘How does the NHS in England work and how is it changing’ by the Kings Fund
Continue to update and populate ePIMS and SHAPE with partner property data
Roll out a training programme on the use of ePIMS and SHAPE to help identify project opportunities
Share property strategies across partners suing the Micro Site as a virtual library
Continue to share details of any requirements for space that could potentially be met by partners. The Micro Site will provide a record of requirements until such time as they have been met or the requirement no longer exists
Programme management
Active participation
Full-time support funded by partners with a remit to integrate partner asset strategies, coordinate key projects from their inception, champion initiatives to optimise the public sector estate, develop successful funding bids etc
Partners actively engage and collaborate with each other through the formal channels of the OPE programme and otherwise, ensuring that the right people are ‘at the table’ with authority and responsibility to identify and help deliver opportunities
Funding Seed corn revenue funding may be provided for early project development work and support can be provided for capital bids. Collaborative projects should be initiated in any event where it makes sense and their initiation should not be contingent upon project development support
Governance
Collaboration outside the Partnership
Commitment
Projects are initiated and driven forward with clear leadership, strategies and business cases actively promote and support collaboration, and delivery plans are agreed between partners – all within the context of top-level commitment to collaboration across partners e.g. CEO OPE forums
Joint working with centres of expertise, forums and pools of specialist knowledge / expertise where this will add value to projects
Commitment of partners is demonstrated by governance as described above coupled with the adoption of a Land Charter, the normalisation of collaboration as a business as usual practice, and support from all CEOs and the EMCCA Mayor.
Maintain two full-time members of the PMO, each nominally focused on a single county but with an eye to cross-county opportunities
Continue to secure funding contributions from partners to cover the direct costs of the PMO
Review membership of the two Programme Boards on an annual basis
Rotate chairmanship of the Programme Boards periodically to help maintain senior level commitment among partners
Encourage and enable partners to meet outside of the formal schedule of Programme Board meetings to collaboratively identify project opportunities and take them forward
Maintain a pipeline of ‘oven ready’ projects capable of meeting the aims of this strategy
Work with partners to bring forward collaborative projects whether or not seed corn revenue funding is available
Help ensure that good practice project governance arrangements are established at the outset of every project
Encourage partners to devise plans for project delivery during feasibility study or business case phases
Support CEOs in building commitment across all partner organisations
Formalise links with key organisations currently outside the partnership to allow partners to benefit from a whole system estates approach
Maintain on our Micro Site a register of stakeholders that partners can engage with on a case by case basis
Develop and promote a Public Land Property Charter that emphasises the way public sector property assets can be deployed to unlock a wide range of benefits and outcomes
Identify and promote mechanisms whereby collaboration between partners becomes a business as usual activity e.g. explicitly address collaboration within estate strategies and business cases
Work with the EMCCA to champion collaboration across the region
Glossop and Gamesly HUB/ regeneration/housing OPE
High Peak Depot Review* Clay Cross – Locality Review OPE FUNDING £85,000 Buxton – Locality Review Estate Reconfiguration OPE FUNDING £I00,000 Mill Lane – Mixed Use Development
Chesterfield
Estate Rationalisation –Co-location Project
FUNDING £50,000 Alfreton – Estate Review
Ripley – Co-location Project Ashbourne – Estate Review Amber Valley Depot Review* Derby(S) – DWP/DCC Co-location OPE
The East Midlands OPE Partnership is supported by: