How should a trust evidence its answers to the DfE estate management annual return?

The annual return confirms how a Responsible Body meets the DfE's School Estate Management Standards. The first annual return closed on 23 November 2026. It was made by each Responsible Body for schools that is eligible for annual DfE capital funding: local authorities, multi-academy and single-academy trusts, sixth form colleges, and dioceses for their voluntary-aided schools. Individual schools did not submit it, and further education colleges were not asked to make it. It had 28 multiple choice questions in six sections, no supporting documents were uploaded, and the DfE states that it does not affect the funding an organisation receives. The DfE's guidance states that the return must be submitted by someone in a senior estate management role, and that there is no penalty and no criticism for an organisation that is not yet meeting the standards.

So the return is self-declared. The reason to evidence it is closer to home. The answers describe how your estate is run, and the first people to rely on them are your own board and whoever holds your job next. A yes that rests on one person's memory is true only for as long as that person is there to give it.

I founded EstatesBase. EstatesBase is one system for statutory compliance, planned and reactive maintenance, asset and condition management, and health and safety, with contractor management and board assurance on the same record. It is the estate operating system for education, built around the DfE framework. A later section says which of these records it holds. Everything before that applies whatever you keep your records in. The first section of the return, strategic estate management, is taken question by question in Answering the annual return from your records.

Twenty-one of the 22 questions rest on five kinds of record, and one asks about the record keeping itself. Sorting your answers by kind is quicker than taking them one at a time, because each kind is kept in the same way.

A named person. "Does your organisation have a named person responsible for estate management?" and "Does your organisation have a nominated sustainability lead?" both rest on an appointment: made in writing, dated, with what the role covers and who covers it when the holder is away. The question on that person's qualifications or experience rests on a record of what they hold and when they gained it. One of the answers on board expertise, "No, but there is a nominated estates lead on the board", rests on the same kind of record for a trustee or governor.

A document that has been approved and has a review date. The questions on continuity plans and what they cover, and on the plan for the overall management and inspection of the estate, rest on a document. So does one answer in each of the questions on preparing for climate change and for cyber attacks: having plans to respond to events such as overheating, flooding or water scarcity, and having a plan to respond to cyber attacks. The other answers to those two questions (inspections and essential maintenance, the use of Environment Agency data, cyber risks documented and reviewed, controls in place) rest on the dated records and registers described below. The record is the plan itself, its version, who approved it and when, and the date it is next reviewed. Where the question asks what a plan covers, each box ticked rests on the plan naming that item. The two questions about the governing board, on its strategic oversight and on its estate management expertise, rest on documents of the same kind: the minutes that show the board reviewing estate plans and monitoring risks and performance, and the board's skills assessment. The School Estate Management Standards say at level 1 that the annual governors' or trustees' skills assessment should include detail of skills and expertise in estates management.

A dated record of work done. The DfE's note to the question "Does your organisation have systems in place to ensure compliance with all legal health and safety requirements?" lists health and safety law, asbestos regulations, legionella, gas safety, fire safety, statutory inspections and risk assessments. A schedule shows what was meant to happen. The evidence is the record of each check: done on this date, by this person, with this result and the evidence for it. The three questions on condition data rest on dated records too. "Have all settings in your organisation had local condition surveys in the last 5 years?" rests on the date of each setting's last survey, and using survey data "to plan and prioritise estate work" rests on being able to follow a finding through to the decision made about it.

A register that is kept current. "Which information does your organisation hold to manage the estate?" lists an asset register, asbestos records, a building layout plan, energy consumption data or CO₂ emissions, energy cost data, running cost information, tenure information, a statutory compliance record and sufficiency data. Each is a register or a data set, and each rests on its entries being up to date and on somebody owning it. Contractor due diligence, the checks on suppliers and the quotes or tenders in the procurement question, and membership of the DfE's Risk Protection Arrangement or commercial insurance are registers of the same kind: a list of entries, each with an expiry or renewal date.

A record of a decision that only the organisation can make. Some answers rest on something only the organisation can establish or decide. "Does your organisation know the terms under which it occupies the land and buildings?" rests on the leases and title documents and on somebody having read them. The questions on budget forecasts and on value for money in procurement rest on the organisation's own judgement and the papers that record it. "Do the estate planning decisions of your organisation include digital infrastructure?" rests on the planning decisions themselves. No system makes these for you. What you can do is write down where each one is recorded.

The remaining question is about the record keeping itself. "Which digital building management systems does your organisation use?" offers BIM (building information modelling), CAFM (computer-aided facility management), spreadsheets and other systems. Whichever you tick, the four tests above apply to what is in it.

Named people. The Named Individual (the person the organisation names as responsible for estate management) is held as a designation of its own, recorded when the organisation is set up. A vacancy has to be acknowledged, and it raises a critical gap that cannot be dismissed. A board member designated for estate oversight is held by name, and a vacancy raises a gap. A nominated sustainability lead is held as a named designation with its history. Competency records are held as structured data and checked when a task is assigned, and the organisation's capability programme, owned by the Named Individual, derives its gap analysis from them across seven estate functions and four levels.

Plans. The estate continuity plan is held as a board-approved governance document with an annual review. An overdue or missing plan is raised as a gap, and the plan's currency is shown in the board's view. Its scenarios are fire, flood, structural failure, relocation, climate and cyber. Loss of critical utilities is not among them. The climate adaptation plan is held as a board-approved document of its own, and a missed review raises a gap. The estate budget plan is a board-approved document over a three to five year horizon, linked to the asset management plan, with the alignment between the two shown and its absence flagged. The health and safety policy is among the approvals the board's queue ships with.

The board's records. The system holds the board's annual estate management skills assessment as a record with its date, its document and the date the next one is due, and an overdue assessment raises a gap. Before a board report, the Named Individual attests to its operational accuracy, in a dated record that cannot be changed afterwards.

Work done. EstatesBase ships with 125 compliance tasks, each carrying its legal basis and its minimum frequency, and no user or bulk edit can set a task to run less often than the law requires. The person completing a task records its evidence as data, field by field for each type of task, with documents and photos attached in support. For a statutory task, evidence is required by default: the system refuses a completion without it unless an administrator records an exception, and the exception is shown as a gap.

Health and safety. Health and safety runs in the same system as estates compliance. Any member of staff reports an incident or near miss and is given a reference. An incident that may be reportable under RIDDOR (the regulations for reporting injuries, diseases and dangerous occurrences) is flagged from what was recorded, with the statutory deadlines shown on its case file. Risk assessments are scored on a matrix the organisation can change, and each produces findings that feed the risk register.

Condition. The organisation imports a commissioned survey in bulk, and the system reports on every row, or the organisation assesses findings in-house. Each finding becomes a managed work item with its grade, cost and priority, and a status that runs to verified completion. Every inspection is kept as a dated record. The system records and manages a finding. It never performs or interprets a survey. Whether an in-house assessment counts towards the DfE's question on local condition surveys is for the organisation to judge against the DfE's wording.

Registers. The asset register ships with a catalogue of 678 asset types, and each asset's record holds its location to the room, its documents and its history. The platform holds an approved contractor register for the whole organisation, and each contractor's record holds insurance, accreditations and the qualifications of named individuals, each with its expiry tracked. Whether credentials are recorded at all, tracked or enforced is the organisation's own setting, and enforcement is not switched on by default. The organisation's insurance or Risk Protection Arrangement position is held as a record with its provider, reference, cover period and renewal date, and lapsed cover raises a gap. The asbestos register entries for each building are held as live records, and the register check is a mandatory step of the pre-works stage before a contractor's work that disturbs the fabric. Energy and water consumption is held from meter readings, the cost of occupation is held at site and portfolio level, and a floor plan can be stored for each building and floor (it is not claimed as a scaled plan). Each contractor engagement records its procurement route (framework, tender or direct award) with its justification.

The return itself. EstatesBase maps its records to the six sections and 28 questions the DfE published for the 2026 to 2027 return. The system reads each of the 28 questions and shows it as confirmed, absent or out of date. Where a question applies site by site, each site is read on its own, so in a trust the site view and the organisation view differ where the sites do. The questions still open since the last attested board report are listed.

The evidence pack. The system assembles the pack behind the return from the live records, with the gaps shown. The pack goes to the board for formal approval, and the approved pack is frozen, with every file in it hashed. Once the board has approved the pack, the system holds every record in it by id and hash. When the Named Individual declares the return, the system compares the records with the approved pack, lists any later change on the return page, and never applies it to the approved pack. The Named Individual decides whether to present an updated pack to the board or to proceed on the approved one, with a reason, and that decision is recorded.

What it does not hold. The organisation enters its return in the DfE's annual return portal (MYEE) itself, and EstatesBase does not submit it. Among the records EstatesBase does not hold are the terms on which land and buildings are occupied, a contractor's financial standing, the organisation's cyber risk register, its controls and its response plan, its use of Environment Agency flood data, a CO₂ emissions figure, the asbestos management plan as a document, and its digital infrastructure planning. This section does not go through every question. The Annual Return Companion, free on the Resources page, takes all 28 one at a time and says what EstatesBase holds against each, including where it holds nothing. How EstatesBase is built around the DfE framework is set out on the DfE framework page.