The Department for Education’s property firm missed a key performance indicator (KPI) in 2022-23 after taking nearly five years to secure a permanent site for a specialist maths school.
However, LocatED hit its remaining seven KPIs and awarded its chief executive a bonus of between £35,000 and £40,000 last year, the organisation’s annual report and accounts reveal.
The arm’s-length body was set up in 2017 to find sites for free schools, but has since widened its remit to advise trusts, schools and the DfE on the best use of education estates.
Here are five key points from LocatED’s annual report:
1. Nearly five years to secure a site for one free school
One of LocatED’s KPIs assesses whether it has secured permanent sites “in good time”.
A historic criticism of the free schools programme has been that schools have had to open in temporary buildings - sometimes without playgrounds or sufficient toilet facilities.
In the 2022-23 financial year, the average time taken to acquire permanent school sites from commission to exchange was 38.2 months, meaning LocatED missed its target.
A LocatED spokesperson told Tes this was “owing to one site that significantly exceeded the usual time between commission and exchange”.
A Freedom of Information request revealed two of the three permanent sites secured that year took 19.8 and 18.8 months respectively.
The outlier that significantly skewed the average was Cambridge Mathematics School, for which LocatED took 57.5 months to find a permanent home.
According to a 2022 tender notice, the DfE offered up to £1 million to a contractor to refurbish the school’s temporary building - a former language school - to make it suitable for sixth-formers.
The school finally opened to 40 students at its temporary site in September 2023, and is expected to expand to 200 students when it moves to its permanent home in 2025.
The government urged top universities to apply to open specialist 16-19 maths schools in 2018, before Rishi Sunak, then chancellor, pledged a maths school for every region in 2020.
Cambridge Maths School, run by the Eastern Learning Alliance and the University of Cambridge, received approval to proceed to the pre-opening phase in 2017.
The LocatED spokesperson said the permanent site for the Cambridge Maths School was secured “after an extensive search in a challenging local property market”, first involving “careful assessment” of three alternative sites.
“With maths schools typically serving a wider catchment area, proximity to good transport links was an important factor in the process, meaning that the search area was narrower than usual,” they added.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “We do not have specific information about this project, but as so often with this government, it suggests a rhetoric and a reality.
“It is clearly important that where there is a need for new education sites, these are acquired in a timely fashion.
“It’s hard to see that approach being applied in this case.”
2. LocatED chief awarded a bonus of at least £35k
The annual report shows that chief executive Lara Newman received between £35,000 and £40,000 in performance-related pay in 2022-23, on top of her salary of £200,000-£205,000.
A spokesperson for LocatED said Ms Newman and all employees in LocatED were paid in accordance with a DfE framework document agreed with the Treasury.
They added: “Ensuring value for money and protecting taxpayers’ money is central to LocatED’s mission.
“To achieve this, LocatED must attract, and retain, professionally qualified employees with specialist commercial property experience.
“The chief executive leads the LocatED team to undertake a large volume of commercially complex property transactions and property advice. Its performance is reviewed on an ongoing basis.”
3. Temporary school sites secured in good time
The average time to secure temporary school sites in 2022-23 was 4.4 months, rated as exceptional. LocatED received an exceptional rating for the percentage of sites secured overall.
It also did good work in terms of the sites it acquired being of good value and saving on site management.
LocatED was rated good or exceptional for all of its KPIs other than securing of permanent sites.
4. 18 school sites acquired
Over the year, 18 school site acquisitions were completed by LocatED. It also managed 113 properties for free schools that are not yet in use.
Its operating costs were £7.831 million, from a budget of £11.282 million.
Board chair Michael Strong said LocatED has saved more than £20 million for the DfE on school sites since 2017.
5. LocatED’s remit expanded
The annual report reiterates that, in November 2022, LocatED had its 2023-25 business case approved by the DfE.
As well as securing new school sites, it now also provides advice on the further education estate, estate efficiency initiatives and on promoting best estate practices across government.
One of its initiatives includes exploring how school surplus space owing to declining pupil numbers can be used.
Ms Newman said in a presentation in December that vacant school accommodation as a result of falling rolls could be “a large cost burden” for schools, though warned that careful consideration was needed before permanently losing space from the education system.
