Findings

Highlights of findings

Overall, agencies reported spending $0.8 million more. The net increase of $0.8 million results from 15 agencies reporting $11.2 million less in expenditure and 15 agencies reporting $12.0 million more. Notably, a number of agencies have removed some office space from the scope of their measurement exercise in FY 2010/11 that they included in the previous reporting period.[43] For example, two agencies reported reductions of $4.8 million in their property costs as a result of this change in measurement. While these changes reduce the value of time series data for some agencies, overall improvement in measurement is positive and expected as this was only the second year of measurement for most agencies.
There is an opportunity to spend $34 million less each year by achieving a target of 16m²per FTE, and higher savings are possible if agencies pursue more aggressive targets. If all agencies above 16m² per FTE met this target, they would spend $34 million less each year. Gross savings of $42.5 million to $62.4 million are possible if agencies pursue more aggressive targets of 15m²or 13m²respectively.
Agencies reported the same level of Property function maturity as last year, and there remains room for improvement. The mean Property MPI of 75 percent has stayed the same since FY 2009/10, and it remains below the UKAA cohort mean score of 83 percent.[44]

[43]For instance, some agencies have more accurate measurement of 'head-office' accommodation (e.g. removing regional offices that deliver frontline customer services).
[44]Management Practice Indicators (MPI) are adopted from the UK Audit Agencies A&S service performance measurement methodology. Within that methodology, the MPI score assesses "the extent to which...[a] function achieves a set of key management practices which will provide an indication of whether it is a well-run, modernised and mature function. Details are found in Appendix 4.

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