A quick question...
How much do you think it costs to run and operate the central government estate every minute?
A. £500?
B. £1,500?
C. More than £2,000?
......
The answer is C.
The £1.5 billion figure represents the annual property running cost of just the designated central government office portfolio.
It includes costs such as:
- rent
- business rates
- hard and soft facilities management
- security
- other property running costs
It is not the total cost of the organisations or people working in those buildings. Staff salaries, IT systems and software, office equipment and wider departmental overheads sit outside this figure.
And the scope of the estate itself is relatively narrow.
It does not represent local-authority and council offices, the wider NHS and healthcare workplace, office space embedded within schools, prisons and other operational buildings, or much of the wider UK public sector and devolved administrations.
So while £1.5 billion a year is already a significant cost, it represents only one part of the much larger public-sector workplace picture.
This is not an argument for indiscriminate cuts to the places from which public services are delivered.
It is an argument for better evidence.
Before reducing, consolidating or investing in space, organisations need to understand which buildings and resources are needed, when they are needed and how effectively they are being used.
Here is a harder question
What proportion of the central government office estate is actually being used on a typical day?
A. Around 40%
B. Around 60%
C. Nobody can reliably say
The answer is C.
Government reports that its office portfolio provides an average of 7.2m² of space per full-time employee.
But that tells us how much space exists for each employee. It does not tell us how many desks, rooms or floors are occupied on a normal Monday, Friday or any other working day.
Occupancy information is published for selected departmental headquarters, but the Cabinet Office warns that it cannot be extrapolated to the wider workforce or government estate. Departments also use different measurement methods, including building passes, Wi-Fi connections and computer logins.
Why not simply measure every building?
Because introducing consistent data collection across an entire estate would be expensive and resource intensive.
The cost is known.
The buildings are known.
But the evidence needed to understand how effectively they are being used remains incomplete.
How is that uncertainty affecting you?
Perhaps your organisation is being asked to:
identify estate efficiencies without affecting service delivery
prove progress against utilisation or cost-saving targets
defend workplace and property budgets
support new attendance or hybrid-working policies
justify consolidation, investment or disposal decisions
demonstrate that previous technology investments are delivering value
But what evidence have you actually been given?
You may have access-control records, room calendars, desk bookings, visitor logs, Wi-Fi information and occasional occupancy surveys.
What you may not have is one clear and consistent picture of what people need, what they book and what they actually use.
You may also have invested in workplace technology already, only to discover that it processes reservations or produces dashboards without making the important decisions much easier.
The estate data trap
This can create a frustrating circular problem:
Your organisation asks you to identify efficiencies.
You explain that better utilisation evidence is needed.
Obtaining that evidence requires surveys, sensors, integrations or consultancy.
The investment is difficult to approve until you demonstrate the savings.
Decisions continue to be made using incomplete information.
Meanwhile, the pressure does not disappear.
The 2025 Spending Review requires all government departments to reduce administration budgets by at least 16% in real terms by 2029-30. Departments are collectively expected to deliver almost £14 billion of efficiency gains by 2028-29.
You are being asked to find efficiencies.
But are you being given the evidence - or the budget - needed to find them?
Better evidence can start with everyday activity
The first step does not always need to be a large sensor deployment, a lengthy consultancy exercise or another complex property system.
It can begin with something much simpler: improving the way everyday workplace activity is managed and recorded.
Employees already need to:
book desks and meeting rooms
invite visitors
reserve parking, lockers or other shared resources
find colleagues and suitable spaces
check in when they arrive
release bookings they no longer require
A modern workplace booking system should make these tasks easy.
But it should also turn them into consistent, usable information.
For example:
Where and when is demand highest?
Which desks and rooms are regularly requested?
How many bookings result in a check-in?
Where are no-shows restricting availability?
Are teams successfully coordinating their attendance?
Which buildings, floors or resources may have spare capacity?
Booking data is not the same as complete occupancy data.
A booking records an intention to attend. It does not always prove that someone arrived.
But it provides a practical starting point: structured information captured with minimal additional effort through a service employees already need to use.
Is your booking system creating evidence?
Many public-sector organisations already have some form of desk, room or visitor-booking technology.
The more important question is what that system is doing for you.
Is it simply processing reservations?
Or is it helping your organisation understand:
expected demand
confirmed attendance
no-show behaviour
resource availability
location and day-of-week trends
opportunities to improve how space is provided
Public-sector organisations do not need another platform that collects data but leaves all the difficult work of interpreting it to the customer.
The booking experience matters. But so does the evidence it creates.
From workplace booking to better decisions
askAiB helps organisations manage:
desks
meeting rooms
visitors
parking
lockers and other shared workplace resources
Employees can access these services through familiar experiences including Microsoft Teams, Outlook, mobile and web.
Alongside making workplace resources easier to find and use, askAiB captures booking, check-in, no-show and utilisation information.
That creates the foundation from which organisations can begin understanding demand more consistently.
Our development direction is focused on building on that foundation.
Greater automation
Unused desks and rooms should not remain unavailable because somebody forgot to cancel a booking.
Automation can help release unused resources, reduce repetitive administration and make it easier for teams to coordinate their time together.
A clearer picture of usage
Booking information can be combined with appropriate indicators of presence to create a better distinction between intended and actual attendance - without necessarily installing dedicated occupancy sensors at every desk and room.
Easier access to answers
Workplace teams should not need to create a custom report every time somebody asks a straightforward question.
Authorised users should be able to ask questions such as:
“Which locations are consistently underused on Fridays?”
“How many bookings resulted in confirmed attendance?”
“Where do we regularly reach peak capacity?”
“Which resources have the highest no-show rates?”
The purpose of AI-assisted reporting is not to make estate decisions on behalf of an organisation.
It is to make reliable evidence easier to access, understand and use.
Start with a problem that needs solving today
No booking system can answer every strategic estate question immediately.
But better evidence has to start somewhere.
A system that makes it easier to manage desks, rooms, visitors and other resources can solve an immediate operational need while beginning to create a more consistent evidence base.
The right starting point should:
make everyday workplace activity easier
require minimal additional effort from employees
capture useful information as part of normal use
reduce administrative work
support better decisions over time
It does not require an organisation to solve its entire estate data challenge on day one.
It requires a foundation capable of supporting what comes next.
A new route through G-Cloud 15
askAiB has been approved as a supplier on G-Cloud 15.
G-Cloud helps UK public-sector organisations procure cloud hosting, software and support services through an established government framework.
For public-sector workplace, property and digital teams, this provides a route to explore a more affordable and practical approach to managing workplace resources and building better utilisation evidence.
Because doing more with less should not mean making arbitrary cuts or asking already-stretched teams to work harder.
It should mean making better use of the resources you already have - and having the evidence to prove it.
The cost is visible. The evidence needed to improve it should be too.