InFocus: Updates From The Government Property Agency (March 2025)

Welcome to InFocus, March 2025

Yvette Greener, Client Director

Hello and welcome to InFocus, bringing you the latest news and views from the Government Property Agency (GPA).

Firstly, let me say a big thank you for your continued support and collaboration during the ongoing Spending Review process. The end of SR21 marked the completion of the first full phase of the GPA’s journey since being established in 2018. We have now taken on responsibility for 53% of the in-scope government office estate, but in doing so we have outgrown our business model and the wider mechanisms we are required to operate within. Our focus now is to stabilise and create a platform that is scalable, fit for purpose and future-proof.

We recognise the importance of partnerships and collaborative engagement with you, our clients, to drive meaningful change and mutual benefit during this process. Together, we strive to deliver value, drive efficiencies, and transform public service outcomes.

In this newsletter you’ll find a number of updates on the work being done to improve our service delivery. In October a new Strategic Client Committee was formed to provide us with strategic insight and recommendations regarding our clients’ current and future requirements. The committee has now met twice and I’m pleased to share an update on some of the progress made so far.

Over the last few months we have also begun the undertaking of a continuous improvement programme aimed at enhancing how we deliver services to improve efficiencies and meet the evolving needs of our clients, customers, and stakeholders. Some of the ways this will aid you are detailed in this newsletter.

We also continue to make improvements to our systems and processes to make information easier to access. I am pleased to share news of planned enhancements to our client relationship management system, with improved features for handling your property requests. I also invite you to take a look at our refreshed Customer Service Portal, which is now serving six of our government hubs and will be rolled out across more buildings in the coming months.

Please share our latest updates with your colleagues and, as ever, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our client team with any questions or comments.

In this issue:

Our first Strategic Client Committee meetings

Our new Strategic Client Committee met for the first time in October, an important step in strengthening our client-centric culture.

Operating as a subcommittee of our Board, the Committee will provide us with strategic insight and recommendations regarding our clients’ current and future requirements. Client members will serve one-year terms to ensure broad representation across government.

At the first meeting in October 2024, the Committee approved its terms of reference and addressed several of our priority areas, including:

Supporting our property portfolio narrative, and the potential role of the GPA in helping to drive economic growth across regions and aligning with broader government objectives
Developing metrics for assessing the GPA’s performance
The Spending Review and addressing funding challenges, including RDEL and CDEL considerations for 2025-26 and the sustainability of the current funding and charging model
Reviewing a new workspace design tool that allows clients greater flexibility in designing their workspace layouts while maintaining inclusivity and sustainability standards

The committee met again in January 2025 and focused on the following areas:

The GPA’s performance monitoring was discussed in more detail, with suggestions being explored for simpler client satisfaction measurements and clearer communication of improvements being delivered
The impact of the Spending Review on the GPA’s five-year plan
A deep dive into the Bristol Temple Quay House development as a case study of the capital project process, discussing learnings and future improvements to project planning

The meetings will continue quarterly and a note from each of the Committee meetings will be shared with all client representatives who attend the COO network and our Client Working Group, ensuring transparency across the government property community.

Our refreshed Customer Service Portal

We are pleased to announce that our Customer Service Portal was refreshed last month, with a new look and feel designed to improve your access to building information.

The refreshed portal is currently available at six of our government hubs, with more locations to be added in the future.

Some of the benefits of the portal include:

Access to information – easily access useful information about a specific workplace such as a facilities list, smarter working policies and the visitors process. You can also view featured knowledge articles including a general induction pack.
Connect with your community – join office community discussions and learn about upcoming events. Subscribe to the Community of your building and organisation to receive updates relevant to you.
Contact individuals – find key contacts by building, organisation or job title, such as reception and security staff via the ‘Directory’. Search ‘Interest Groups’ to connect with like-minded individuals.

The refreshed portal is currently available at the following government hubs:

Darlington, Feethams House
Birmingham, 23 Stephenson Street
Peterborough, Quay House
London, 3-8A Whitehall Place
London, 55 Whitehall
London, 22-26 Whitehall

The refreshed design has been made in line with Government Digital Service standards (GDS) which applies to gov.uk products. The improvements, tested for accessibility prior to launch, ensures that all users have easier access to vital information ahead of their visit to the building.

Looking forward, we will continue to work with you and your people onsite to make iterative improvements to the platform and the specific building information available.

Details about the improved portal have been shared in the relevant office buildings. If you have internal platforms we can use to update your employees further, please get in touch so we can provide a notice in the relevant format.

To find out more about the Customer Service Portal, provide feedback on its new look or to tell us what content you’d like to see on the portal, please contact: [email protected]

An update on our Client Relationship Management Programme

Since its launch in August 2023, our Client Relationship Management system (Salesforce CRM) has become a critical tool in managing our work with you. Alongside the GPA Client Portal, for those of you who take Portfolio services, the CRM has transformed how we manage and report on your queries. This has enabled us to focus on providing timely and appropriate resolutions to issues that matter to you.

Our programme team has recently turned their attention to a series of further enhancements to our CRM. One of these enhancements is the way in which we manage your requests for changes to your occupations, including:

renewals
variation or termination of an existing agreement
new requests

Updates to our process, supported by improved tracking, should improve our efficiency in handling your occupancy-related requests. This will also mean that if you receive our Portfolio services you will be able to view requests via the GPA Client Portal under a dedicated category, separate to other queries.

More information on these changes will be communicated via our Client Managers when the GPA Client Portal is updated.

Continuous Improvement Programme

Our Continuous Improvement Programme is focused on enhancing how we deliver services, improving efficiency, and meeting the evolving needs of our clients, customers, and stakeholders. As we manage over 53% of the government office estate, the programme provides a solid foundation for sustainable improvements that will continue to benefit you in the long term.

Here are a few workstreams and their focus areas that will be relevant to you:

Improving billing

To support financial planning for you and your teams, accurate and timely billing remains a priority. We’re improving our processes and strengthening our controls to give you greater confidence in our approach.

We have reviewed our budgeting, bill raising and occupancy tracking processes, which will improve billing accuracy.
Our current focus is on ensuring occupancy agreements are efficiently agreed and uploaded so that your billing reflects the latest agreed position.
Next year we plan to embed further controls to ensure that occupancy agreements are always in place before any changes in space occupancy.

Property transactions

Occupancy agreements are essential for formalising the occupation of our buildings and workspaces. To improve this, we are:

Improving the end-to-end process to ensure agreements are in place and finalised at the right time.
Introducing a Document Management Policy to set out the roles and responsibilities of clients, the GPA and BNPPRE
Refining the structure of agreements, to provide greater clarity for all parties.
These enhancements will ensure smoother transactions and better alignment between us and our clients.

Workplace Services (London region)

We continue to focus on delivering consistent workplace service standards across our estate, with a particular emphasis on our London region.

This workstream focuses on raising service levels in London to match the high standards we’re achieving elsewhere across the estate.
By addressing feedback and ensuring we’re aligned with best practices, we aim to exceed the expectations of our clients, customers and stakeholders.

Charging model

We are reviewing our financial model to ensure we have a clear, sustainable model that supports our continued evolution, delivering value for money and enabling us to deliver an efficient civil office estate. This work includes:

Exploring models that will enable us to drive efficiencies and invest in service improvement
Benchmarking options to ensure value for money
Client engagement to support a collaborative approach

Our Continuous Improvement Programme is just one of the ways we’re looking at how we deliver value for money, enhance client satisfaction, and streamline processes across the GPA estate. Please reach out to your Client Manager if you have any questions on these workstreams.

Recognition for our industry-leading partnership and service design

We were delighted to win at the PFM Awards in November, together with JLL, in the ‘Partners in Corporate – Public Sector’ category.

The award recognised the success of our innovative workplace services approach, working in partnership with our strategic performance partner JLL and our regional supply chain.

JLL was appointed Workplace Services strategic partner in 2023 as part of our Workplace Services Transformation Programme, which transformed how the Government’s office estate is managed and operated. The programme ensured our supplier contracts are optimised for resilience and business continuity, while reducing any operational downtime.

Our workplace services partnerships are supporting UK-wide economic growth through regionally-focused SME engagement and local employment, and enhancing productivity and engagement with civil servants through improved digital solutions and streamlined service support.

Our interim Workplace Services Director, Carly Ersser said:

This award is fantastic recognition of the bold approach we have taken with our partners to implement a dynamic and agile customer-centric operating model.

Through our Workplace Services Transformation Programme we brought together some of the leading private sector suppliers to deliver improved and more resilient services for our clients and customers.

Our shared framework and deliverables are centred on collaboration and customer experience to deliver on our strategic priorities and ultimately provide greater value for money across the government office estate.