The boss of the Department for Education’s property arm LocatED was given a £40,000 bonus last year.
The organisation’s latest accounts show Lara Newman, its £210,000-a-year chief executive, received the bonus in performance-related pay in 2023-24.
The documents also reveal that the government-backed company was last year told to halt all land sales so it could help RAAC-hit schools at the height of the crumbly concrete crisis.
When asked about Newman’s bonus, the company stressed that it “must attract, and retain, professionally qualified employees with specialist commercial property experience” to best protect taxpayer cash.
“The chief executive leads the LocatED team to undertake a large volume of commercially complex property transactions and property advice. Its performance is reviewed on an ongoing basis.”
Accounts show Newman received between £40,000 and £45,000 in performance-related pay over the year.
Her salary also rose from the £200,000 to £205,000 banding in 2022-23 to at least £210,000. On average, LocatED’s workforce took home £74,500.
The company added that all employees were paid in line with “framework document provided by the DfE and agreed with HM Treasury”.
Accounts show £8.1 million in operating costs for LocatED, of which £5 million went towards wages.
The company estimates it generated savings of just under £3.5 million to the taxpayer in the same year.
This represents an almost 75 per cent drop on the £13 million-a-year savings between 2017-18 and 2022-23.
Land disposals ‘put on hold’
This followed the department asking for all LocatED land disposals to be “put on hold due to the resource pressures associated with undertaking urgent RAAC-related work”.
It helped 106 affected schools get “modular classrooms to allow face-to-face teaching, caseworker support and provision of multiple offsite temporary solutions”.
LocatED said it also adds “considerable value to the education estate through work that isn’t quantified in financial savings”.
LocatED was established eight years ago to procure sites for new free schools.
Its work now extends to acquiring and flogging sites on the department’s behalf and providing “an expert commercial property consultancy service” to officials and schools. Falling rolls have meant fewer new schools.
Its current business case, approved two years ago, is due to end in March.
The department has lodged a request with the Treasury for LocatED to continue running for a further 12 months.
The company confirmed it has not yet received an outcome.
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