Estate management in higher education – podcast transcript

Simon:  We’re here talking today to Andra Laird, Project Manager at Audit Scotland about Audit Scotland’s latest report, Estate management in higher education.  Andra, what’s this report about?

Andra:  Our report looks at the impact of public sector funding on higher education institutions estates and we also look at the role of the Scottish Funding Council which provides money to the institutions for use to help them improve their estates, so it looks at both those things.

Simon:  What have you found?

Andra:  We found that the amount of public sector investment in the estate has been increasing and that’s beginning to have some impact on the overall quality of the estate but even though that investment is increasing the amount of work that needs to be done on the estate is also increasing.  So there’s been some progress in improving the estate but really a lot more needs to be done to deal with the backlogs and also to allow the estates to develop to cope with changing needs.  

Simon: Why did Audit Scotland do this report?

Andra:  An earlier report by the Scottish Government had identified that there was a large backlog of maintenance work needing done on the estates in universities and higher education colleges and the Scottish Funding Council began distributing money to institutions to allow them to improve their estates in 2001 and 2002.  So far they’ve given out about a quarter of a billion pounds worth of public money for investment in the estate.  So for those two reasons we wanted to do this study to see what the impact of that funding had been.

Simon: You spoke there a little bit about the amount of public money going into the higher education estate.  What does this mean for students and for the wider Scottish public?

Andra:  What it’ll mean for students is obviously they’ll be being taught in a better quality of buildings and facilities.  It also helps the economy more widely because the money’s being invested in research facilities which help attract staff to our institutions to work in Scotland and allows us to develop new ideas which can create commercial companies and things like that.

Simon:  You said earlier that this added investment in terms of the condition of the estate but you also mentioned that the backlog of work that needs to be done is growing – I’m just wondering how those two messages reconcile.

Andra:  These are actually two different measures.  The first one is about the area of space in the estate that’s being improved and we’ve seen that that’s improved from 48 percent up to 55 percent between 2001 and 2005/06 in terms of the amount that is now classed as sound.  The other measure’s actually the amount of money it would cost to improve what is left in need of improvement and that is also increasing.

Simon:  What would you like to see happen as a result of this report?

Andra:  We’ve made a number of recommendations in the report.  Two in particular are worth mentioning.  First of all we’d like to see a clear commitment from the Scottish Government to support the estate along with further commitments from institutions themselves to continue developing their estates.  We’d also like to see much better and more frequent public reporting of the impact that the investment is having.

Simon: OK Andra, thanks very much for your time.