“CREATING A SMALLER, GREENER MORE EFFICIENT WELSH GOVERNMENT ESTATE IS CRUCIAL IN THESE TOUGH TIMES”

The Welsh Government has made good progress in reducing the size, improving the efficiency and reducing the environmental impact of its estate in the last 12 months, Finance Minister Jane Hutt said today.

The findings are revealed as part of the Welsh Government’s fifth ‘State of the Estate’ report, which reports on the efficiency and environmental performance of the administrative estate. It sets the background against which the estate is currently being managed with regard to targets set out in the Location Strategy Programme 2010-15.

The report concentrates on 3 main priorities which are:

• To reduce the size of the overall estate to 25 offices by 2015;
• To increase the efficiency of the administrative offices on the estate; and
• To improve the environmental performance of the buildings on the estate – including reducing CO2 emissions by 30% by 2020.

The key achievements for 2012/13 include:

• A 4.34% reduction in the overall size of the Welsh Government estate – the number of office locations has reduced from 41 to 35;
• A reduction of £302,000 in the overall annual occupancy cost from the previous year;
• Space efficiency improved across the estate by 8.4%; and
• Further reductions in carbon, cutting CO2 by 1.1%;

Finance Minister, Jane Hutt said: “We are committed to making the most effective and efficient use of the resources at our disposal during these tough times – that’s what the people of Wales expect and demand of us.

“The annual State of the Estate report is a measure of how well we are managing our administrative property asset. I am delighted by the continuing progress we have made during the year toward ensuring we have an efficient, effective and sustainable estate that meets its current and projected needs.

“We continue to work hard to better align our office estate to the business of government and we have pushed hard for efficiency savings – investing where appropriate, rationalising where necessary and optimising savings through better utilisation.

“On-going pressure on budgets means there can be no let up in the continuing work to better align the asset base to support Government business and push hard for efficiency savings.