EstatesBase and The Estates Strategy Partnership are two parts of one estates capability. The partnership advises on governance, capability and how the estate function is organised and run. EstatesBase is where the estate is recorded, managed and its evidence held. Each is complete on its own, and used together they compound, because the advice and the platform rest on the same reading of what the DfE framework requires.
A platform records the estate and holds its evidence. It cannot decide who should hold which duty, how the estate function should be organised as the organisation grows, what a condition survey should change in the capital plan, or what the board should be asking at its next meeting. Those are the decisions the partnership exists for, and they connect. The partnership works across five connected domains of estate management: governance architecture (who is accountable for the estate, and how the board receives assurance rather than reports); operating model design (how the organisation is set up to manage its estate over time: who does what, who owns what, at what level); compliance infrastructure (the records and routines that show the statutory duties are being met); people and capability (whether the people carrying the work are able to carry it); and assurance and sustainability (whether the board could evidence its position if challenged, and whether the estate's condition and investment plan are on a footing that lasts). A question in one becomes a question in the next. A gap in who is accountable becomes a capability gap; a capability gap becomes an assurance problem; the assurance problem reaches the board, and the annual return asks the board to put its position in writing. When separate advisers each take one piece, the joins between them get missed. The partnership was built to see the whole picture, with named practitioners who also do the work: a former multi-academy trust Chief Operating Officer leading it, a governance specialist, and the team that built the platform around the DfE framework.
EstatesBase is the partnership's in-house platform. Where it fits an organisation the partnership will say so, and where another system fits better it will say that; its advice stands whatever system an organisation runs. Adopting EstatesBase carries no requirement to engage the partnership, and the partnership's advice delivers its full value on whatever system you run. Everything beyond the free Initial Consultation is yours to decide, scoped and priced with you from what it finds. The partnership's work runs from a single commissioned piece to standing senior capacity: an assessment and gap analysis mapped against the Estate Management Standards maturity levels, with prioritised recommendations; an improvement plan, setting out what to do, in what order, owned by whom, over what timescale; the estates documents the return asks about (an estate vision and strategy, an asset management plan, a business continuity plan, a climate action plan, an estates budget), written with you and board-ready; governance training for boards, governors and governance professionals on their estate oversight obligations and wider governance responsibilities; a review and design of how estate management should work in your organisation over time; and, for organisations whose missing piece is leadership itself, a named lead practitioner accountable to you, with a defined block of time in each period applied to deliverables agreed in advance.
The partnership's own site sets out how it works and who its practitioners are: estatespartnership.org.uk.
