Single Scottish Estate
On behalf of Scottish Ministers, Property and Construction Division is innovating, enhancing and transforming construction procurement and property. We lead, enable and deliver the best public sector property and construction procurement policy for Scotland, improving the work of procurement professionals and the stewardship of Scottish Ministers property.
Our Single Scottish Estate programme will help us have a more efficient approach to public sector property management that will deliver value for money, save public funds and reduce public sector property footprint enabling progress towards our net zero estate targets and supporting the best delivery of services to the public.
We will do this by building on existing good practice, and working collectively with public sector bodies to develop and deliver targets to retain the right size and condition of estate in the right place at the right times across all publicly funded bodies in Scotland, ensuring that the size of our estate is sufficient to accommodate business delivery and reflects changes in working practices.
Background
This programme supports the commitment made by the Scottish Government in the 2023 to 2024 PfG which was published on 5 September 2023 to deliver a more efficient approach to public sector property management. The latest Scottish Government Programme for Government was published on 4 September 2024.
This programme of work also supports the Scottish Government commitment in the Resource Spending Review to minimise cost and maximise best value in relation to the public sector estate and is a lever available to help public bodies meet resource reduction commitments going forward.
It will align with the review and reform of public services being overseen by the Deputy First Minister. The SSE programme will itself be overseen by the Minister for Public Finance, Mr McKee. Public Bodies were written to on 24 May 2023 to inform them that:
The Single Scottish Estate Programme will:
- support publicly-funded bodies to work across organisational boundaries to co-locate, share on-site services wherever possible, make best use of technology and changes in working practices to optimise the estate footprint and release surplus space
- take a location-based approach to identify opportunities for short, medium and longer-term improvements and will align with the review of public services and our collective duty to deliver Net Zero commitments
- support public bodies to work collaboratively to achieve improvements in property data for strategic planning, location-based reviews, setting short, medium and longer-term property KPIs and actions, working across silos and organisational boundaries
- minimise costs and footprint whilst supporting efficient business delivery and enabling bodies to step towards a net zero estate with fresh guidance and policies and a strong stakeholder engagement plan
- deliver expert advice and lead pathfinder solutions as the programme builds on existing work to innovate, transform and improve the Scottish public sector estate
Good progress has been made implementing the programme and benefits from it. We have finalised and implemented the governance arrangements with support from Ministers and senior leaders across the public sector. This includes a Senior Stakeholder Group chaired by Mr McKee and a Property Leaders Forum for property leads in public bodies. Further information on Governance, including minutes of meetings will be added to these pages in the near future.
Updates
This page will continue to be updated with progress and publications and you can follow recent news via X (@ScotProcurement) and the Public Procurement and Property Blog.
Contact
Email Property and Construction Division:
PropertyandConstruction@gov.scot