Mastering strategic asset management

Detailed information is needed for organisations to help streamline estate management, assess opportunities for rationalisation, and develop an effective estates strategy.

The first step is to establish exactly which properties you own - not always easy, given the numerous reorganisations which have taken place in recent years.

For example, some of the properties on your assets register might not be registered at the Land Registry in the name of the current NHS body. If so, you may not have legal title to the property until the Land Registry’s records are updated to reflect the correct ownership. This may affect your ability to deal with the property such as progressing a development, or completing a land sale.

You should locate the relevant internal NHS property transfer order evidencing the transfer of the property between NHS organisations, which will have been issued at the time of your organisation’s establishment. Your solicitors should then be able to register the correct details of the NHS body now owning the property.

Unfortunately, there is no accessible central databank of transfer orders, so there may be complications if you cannot locate this order. In these situations, solicitors can often still register the new ownership with the Land Registry, although this can sometimes be a lengthy process.

You should also ensure that all original transfer orders are retained for safekeeping with their title deeds or else held by solicitors, in order to prevent them becoming mislaid in later years. Being able to prove the statutory devolution of title can also sometimes be important in litigation claims.

Keeping records

Where NHS bodies hold properties by way of a lease (either as landlord or as tenant) it is useful to maintain user-friendly summaries of the key provisions of each lease for management purposes.

Keeping on top of the key dates and provisions should help to ensure that you maximising income from tenants and do not miss out on rent reviews or opportunities to charge for estates services for example, or to exercise break clauses if the property is no longer needed.

If an estates rationalisation leads to a land disposal, you should be aware from an early stage of any restrictions or adverse rights which might impact on the potential disposal price. For example, restrictive covenants might limit the future use of the land. Identifying these problems early on should enable you to negotiate with the adjoining land owner to remove the restrictions, or else to obtain title insurance.

For future NHS reorganisations and mergers, you should include the full postal address of each property to be transferred in the transfer order schedule. In addition, if a property has only a vague description without a full postal address, it may be worth showing the property boundaries on a plan attached to the order.

This is also important where two separate NHS organisations inherit a site from a single predecessor body. If so, transfer orders will usually not deal with the necessary cross-rights over each other’s land, which may cause problems if access rights or utilities connections are then required between the properties. Ideally, any necessary rights should be agreed between the parties prior to the transfer order splitting the site in two in order to avoid future difficulties.