At the request of the Chair, the Director of Law, HR and Asset Management submitted a report on how the council intended to achieve a 20% reduction in administrative accommodation by 2011.

On 27 November 2008 the Chief Executive reported to Cabinet with proposals arising from the Strategic Asset Review (SAR) for the consolidation of the Council’s asset base. Part of his report dealt with administrative accommodation. This advised members that, with a programme of workspace change, it would be reasonable to expect to save at least 20% of the council’s annual expenditure on office accommodation.

This figure of 20% represented a reasonable estimate of savings that would be delivered through a change programme that would include a number of elements and the report gave details of these. It also made clear that for this scale of savings to be achieved significant initial investment would be required both to create new and more efficient working environments and to provide the necessary IT infrastructure and equipment.

The proposals arising from the SAR were currently subject to consultation and it was intended that they would be the subject of a further report to Cabinet on 15 January 2009. If the proposals relating to office accommodation were agreed, the Director would report to a future meeting of Cabinet on more detailed proposals for accommodation change, including the centralisation of current facilities management arrangements.

Also at the request of the Chair, the Asset Manager circulated a list of municipal accommodation with asset valuations (this being a depreciative cost evaluation not a market value) and revenue expenditure for each. He drew the Committee’s attention to those seven buildings identified in his report for initial vacation and responded to Members’ comments on the buildings identified.

In response to comments from Members and the leader of the Conservative Group, the Director reported that he had held some discussions with the Head of IT and gave an indication of the costs per person to introduce a scheme of agile working. These costs would reduce with economies of scale leading to greater savings being generated the more people who were working from home or on the road. Savings of £1m could be made after all IT etc was taken into account with a reduction in administrative accommodation, although these savings would not necessarily form part of the 2009/10 budget setting process.

A member suggested that a more substantial piece of scrutiny work could be undertaken on the issue of office accommodation by a sub-group of the Committee which could then report back to the Committee.

The Director stated that he would be happy to bring a more detailed report back to the next meeting of the Committee at which point the Committee would have a clearer picture and could decide whether it wanted to pursue a more in-depth piece of scrutiny work. He would also report upon the leasehold arrangements for buildings such as Cheshire Lines.

Resolved - That a further report be submitted to the next meeting of this committee following a Cabinet decision on the implementation of the Strategic Asset Review and the development of an implementation programme for accommodation change.