Carter Jonas conducted a Council-wide consultation on a pre-determined section of the London Borough of Haringey’s commercial and community properties. The project was to measure the performance of the existing properties and display a commercial, alternative-use value to the Council.

The project also identified underperforming properties that were not being used to the best of their potential. The drivers included releasing assets for better operational purposes, generating revenue and capital receipts for the Council.

The greatest challenge was for Carter Jonas to present the existing performance data of the various properties to all Service Heads of department within the Council, the majority of whom had limited property background knowledge. Given the wide ranging and complex Council properties being examined, a scoring system was developed to provide a justified platform upon which to measure the existing use value and potential alternative use value of the sites.

With such a large and varied portfolio, Carter Jonas set up workshop presentations with all Service Directors in the Council to agree the scoring mechanism for all properties. This included qualitative and quantitative considerations in the form of questions for all Directors to agree with advice from Carter Jonas. A worksheet of basic data was prepared for each property providing all required information on which to base the score in one quick and easy place for reference.

The scoring criteria was based on the Council’s own strategic operational and property regeneration agendas.

This took some considerable resource and time but made certain that:

• all Service Directors understood the scoring mechanism
• the scoring criteria was uniformly agreed as a tool to measure the performance of the properties
• the information was explained clearly in the form of presentations or face-to-face workshops

The result was a system which displayed and allowed measurement of a highly complex portfolio to the right decision making people in a large organisation. This allowed the client to achieve Cabinet Member and Board approval quickly.