ACES conference: Cornwall to cut office space by 35%
Cornwall Council has approved plans to reduce its 78 principal offices down to 30 in a bid to save 30% from its budget.
The proposals, which were approved by cabinet members yesterday, involve cutting the overall space occupied by the council by 35%.
Speaking at the Association of Chief Estates Surveyors’ autumn conference in Newquay today, Cornwall’s chief executive Kevin Lavery (pictured) revealed his Office Accommodation Plan, which he said would produce “some significant savings”. However, he added that it would “just scratch the surface” because the council owns 4000 buildings.
Cornwall is under pressure to find savings because last year, seven district authorities were merged into the council.
Lavery said this offered great scope for savings but Cornwall had experienced resisdence among elected members to rationalising property.
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Whatever the detail of the 20th October announcements it is clear they will lead directly and indirectly to a drastic reduction in office requirements, particularly in the public sector.
Many organisations are already preparing and progressing extensive programmes of office rationalisation. For example, Birmingham City Council are progressing a 35% reduction in its 1 million sq ft back office estate and Somerset County Council have recently approved plans to vacate 40% of its office space.
The pace and quantity of this offloading is expected to accelerate over the next 2 years as the new austerity bites and forces change beyond traditional ways and existing organisational boundaries.
Organisations are being forced to rationalise their people numbers, and improve utilisation of assets but they also now have the long needed driver to focus on more ambitious sector wide opportunities. Total Place sharing, service outsourcing and particularly wider implementation of agile and distributed working as technology enables and competitive financial pressure demands re-definition of work and the workplace.
The overall result of cost cutting, sharing, merging, outsourcing, agility and transformational activity that the public sector must pursue is that many organisations will be planning to reduce their office requirements by up to 50% .
Paul Allsopp
http://www.agile.property.com
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