The Department for Education has launched a property company to set up 500 free schools in England and is now seeking out prospective sites.
LocatED has been established to acquire the land across the UK, to help the government build the schools by 2020, creating 600,000 new places by 2021.
The company will also secure sites to help deliver the additional 110 free schools announced in the Budget.
LocatED’s chief executive Lara Newman, said that while the Education Funding Agency had previously bought sites for free schools, LocatED would be a specialist organisation established to overcome some of the challenges in procuring sites.
Board members include former CBRE chairman Michael Strong and Kajima managing director Julian Rudd-Jones.
“LocatED has the expertise and will operate at pace to negotiate with multiple partners across the private and public sector,” said Newman.
“Two thirds of us are on the property side and we have a commission for just under a 100 sites to find across England with another few coming in the next couple of weeks.
We are interested in talking to landlords, social housing providers, supermarkets – anyone who has landholdings, however small.
“We did very well in the previous parliamentary term, delivering 254 schools but a lot of hanging fruit is gone – a lot of local authority sites that we might have achieved on a peppercorn basis have been picked up. The market is difficult now. We are in a position where there is perhaps a softening post-Brexit so we are hoping to exploit some of the residual negativity we are seeing in terms of housebuilders slowing down.
“We want to work with partners to do mixed use schemes and fit schools into urban areas where ordinarily it might be quite difficult to find sites on their own.”
She said the company was keen to dispel ideas of what a traditional school site would be. While the days of the one and two storey school might be numbered, in a constantly changing urban environment different kinds of spaces could be made into schools.
“We’ve bought churches, old university buildings, hospitals, brownfield sites – the full gamut from 10,000 sq ft to 175,000 sq ft. We buy land to build new schools, convert existing buildings through permitted development rights.
“Schools aren’t what they used to be; we are talking about special schools, alternative provision schools, mainstream schools, all the way from pre-schools. It can be anything, we are challenging the traditional view of what a school site may be.”
What is a free school?
Free schools were introduced after the 2010 election and are a type of academy, not for profit and independent from the local authority. They are funded directly by the Department for Education. They are set up by local groups where there is a need, for example parents and charities, through a centralised application system.
The LocatED board will consist of:
- ■ Lara Newman MBE, chief executive of LocatED. She has more than 20 years’ property experience. Previously a board director at Cleanslate, a development and property consulting company, Newman worked with landowners, agents and developers. Prior to that Newman was managing director at Navigant Consulting, where she specialised in property deals and capital investment projects for government education capital programmes.
- ■ Michael Strong as board chairman. He spent 15 years as chairman of CBRE, previously CEO of CBRE. He was also a non-executive director of NHS Property Services, The Osborne Group and Waterman Group.
- ■ Phil Ellis as non-executive board member. He was previously client portfolio director at Aviva Investors.
- ■ Jayne Maclennan as non-executive board member. She was previously group director of property at FirstGroup, a non-executive board member and chair of remuneration committee for Glasgow Prestwick Airport and non-executive director for Aberdeen Harbour Board.
- ■ Julian Rudd-Jones as non-executive board member. He is managing director of Kajima Partnerships and Kajima Properties, the two principal UK operating businesses of Kajima Corporation, with extensive experience in commercial property development and the funding, delivery and management of social infrastructure.
- ■ Caroline Tolhurst as a non-executive board member. She was previously compliance officer and chartered secretary. She operated at board level for 20 years including 10 years as company secretary to Grosvenor. She is currently a board and audit Committee member and chair of Governance & Remuneration Committee at A2Dominion Housing Group.
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