Managing FCDO’s overseas estate

FCDO should develop its estates strategy further, setting out the overseas estate needed to fulfil UK government objectives. FCDO should build on the strategic work it has already conducted to ensure it can demonstrate that its plans for its estate fully support UK diplomatic, foreign policy and wider government objectives. FCDO?s estates strategy should rank posts by strategic importance and identify opportunities for improving long-term value for money. Where appropriate, it should consider options such as co-locating posts with other diplomatic missions, reducing the number of posts and leasing properties.

FCDO should support its overseas estates strategy with a fully costed delivery plan, clarifying its priorities and identifying any necessary trade-offs. FCDO should ensure its estates strategy reflects a full and informed assessment of the funding it is likely to have available in future. This should also consider the feasibility and scale of asset sales and efficiencies.

FCDO should review its estates governance structure to ensure that it is working effectively. FCDO should review whether its new ESND structure is achieving the intended benefits and identify whether any further improvements are necessary to ensure effective oversight of its overseas estate.

FCDO should produce a plan for its estates workforce. FCDO should evaluate the skills it requires in its estates staff, identify skills gaps in the organisation and create a plan to set out how it intends to close these gaps. This includes central staff, staff at posts, contractors and the balance between specialist and generalist roles.

FCDO should ensure that the collection and use of good-quality and complete data is embedded into the day-to-day running of its overseas estate. FCDO should develop a plan to ensure its data on the estate is kept up to date after its one-off FMR24 exercise. FCDO should proceed with its plan to integrate and consolidate estates data centrally as a matter of urgency, to ensure it can use this data.

FCDO should identify suitable performance benchmarks for its maintenance delivery models and use this to assess the performance of different models. Once benchmarks and performance measures have been identified, FCDO should establish a monitoring regime to support data collection.

FCDO should review its management of its estate capital projects, to ensure it has appropriate oversight of delivery risks at a portfolio level. This includes reviewing portfolio governance, reporting and management information.