Recruitment struggles are affecting departments' ability to manage maintenance services effectively, the National Audit Office has said.
Departments and arm's-length bodies are struggling to recruit property specialists, largely due to uncompetitive salaries, according to the NAO. The resulting shortage of experienced property professionals across government is contributing to a rising maintenance backlog and poor maintenance of public service facilities, the spending watchdog said.
The issues are spelled out in a report today from the NAO on maintenance of public service facilities, which finds the government’s maintenance backlog has risen from £14.8bn in January 2019 to at least £49bn as of October 2024. It says “incomplete, out-of-date and inconsistent” data means the current figure could be much higher.
The report warns that poor maintenance of public service facilities has led to building failures that have affected the delivery of public services, government’s productivity and its ability to withstand shocks.
Property specialist recruitment struggles getting worse
The total number of property professionals within government fluctuates, with the government property function workforce calculated at 7,095 (full-time equivalent) employees in 2024, compared to 6,950 in 2023 and 7,600 in 2022.
Property professionals within departments and arm’s-length bodies told the NAO that they do not have enough accredited property experts and that it is becoming “increasingly difficult to recruit property specialists”.
One government organisation told the watchdog that it had been trying to fill a property vacancy for over a year. The main barrier they cited was the salary offered, which is lower than in the private sector.
CSW understands that some departments have had vacancies for as long as two years.
These gaps in departments’ capacity and capability "impact their ability to manage the performance of private sector providers of maintenance services effectively", the report warns.
The report says the government has made progress in recruiting and upskilling people with property expertise – it has met its targets for property recruitment via apprenticeships and the Civil Service Fast Stream (to attract a minimum of 300 apprentices and 60 graduates by 2025). It is also on track to meet its target for 90% of government property professionals at grade 7 and above to have a professional accreditation by 2030.
But it warns that the Office for Government Property’s efforts to improve capability are being thwarted by an incomplete picture of current capability levels, as some public bodies are not required to provide this information.
It says the OGP should work with departments to ensure they include actionable property workforce plans in their strategic workforce plans, and use the data it collects on the property profession to make recommendations to departments about addressing skills gaps in property roles.
Property maintenance backlog bites
The report focuses on the buildings that the government uses to deliver services to the public and support its operations, such as NHS properties, schools, jobcentres, courts, prisons, museums, research facilities and warehouses. It does not look at central government buildings, which were covered in the NAO’s 2022 report Managing central government property.
Some 88% of the £49bn backlog cited in the report is on MoD properties, schools and NHS sites.
Government officials told the NAO that causes of the growing backlog include: historic underinvestment; cost increases and inflationary pressures; loss of income due to Covid; and many aged buildings reaching the end of their intended operational life around the same time.
The report also warns that five of the main government departments have identified property “failure, safety or suitability” as one of their principal risks, including the Department for Education, Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Justice (which lead on three of the four largest government and public sector property portfolios).
These property risks have resulted in incidents such as leaks and floods in prisons, postponed court hearings and museum closures, while around 5,400 clinical service incidents have occurred in the NHS in each of the last five years on average due to property and infrastructure failures.
The report also warns that short-term funding plans, tied to spending review periods, mean departments and ALBs are not able to make long-term plans and struggle to get good value for money. It calls on the Treasury to consider agreeing longer-term settlements for property investment for organisations with robust plans for their sites.
Data disarray
Data gaps mean the backlog could be much higher than the figures shared in today's report. The most recent attempt by the OGP to quantify the maintenance backlog across government property, in March 2022, did not include data on the MoD buildings, except for single-living accommodation for service personnel. Meanwhile, HM Prison and Probation Service’s calculation of replacement costs for probation centres is based on 2019 values.
A further challenge is that organisations include different costs in their calculations of the backlog. This also affects the government’s ability to make strategic decisions on property, including prioritisation of funding and delivery of cross-government initiatives.
To address these issues, the OGP is introducing InSite, a new data collection system that it hopes will improve data consistency, and is aiming to complete its implementation by March.
The NAO said the OGP should also mandate that all government departments and ALBS use its standardised definition of the maintenance backlog.
NAO head Gareth Davies said: “Allowing large maintenance backlogs to build up at the buildings used to deliver essential public services is a false economy. Government needs better data on the condition of its operational assets and should use it to plan efficient maintenance programmes to deliver better services and value for money”.
Public Accounts Committee chair Geoffrey Clifton-Brown added: “Government’s poor data means it lacks a clear picture of the true state of affairs across the public sector. With the maintenance backlog estimated to have reached at least £49bn government must urgently break the cycle of short-term thinking, dither and delay, which only leads to spiralling future costs.”
A government spokesperson said: “We are taking immediate action to remedy the state of disrepair found across the public estate, which is the result of long-term underinvestment in maintenance and upkeep.
“As part of this, we are already investing billions of pounds to deliver critical repairs and rebuild our public services, to tackle maintenance backlogs and improve our hospitals, schools and prisons as we deliver on the Plan for Change.”