LocatED chief to depart as DfE prepares to absorb property firm

The boss of the Department for Education’s property arm LocatED is set to step down from the role, as the body prepares to be brought in-house.

Lara Newman, its CEO, has announced she will take “on a new challenge” when the company gets absorbed back into government next month.

Launched nine years ago to procure sites for new free schools, the firm’s work was extended to acquiring and selling sites on DfE’s behalf and providing “an expert commercial property consultancy service” to officials and leaders.

‘New challenge’

Posting on LinkedIn, Newman said: “After nearly a decade, I’m leaving LocatED.

“I won’t be joining the team as they transfer to DfE on April 1 — instead, I’ll be taking on a new challenge that I’m not quite ready to share the details of yet.”

The decision to move LocatED into the department came after the Cabinet Office launched a review of all arm’s length bodies across government earlier this year.

DfE permanent secretary Susan Acland-Hood previously said it would help ministers “manage and transform the education estate, make it sustainable, give great value to the taxpayer, and support excellent outcomes for children and young people”.

LocatED’s latest accounts state it “generated important capital receipts, delivered substantial savings to the public purse and is at the heart of delivering programmes to enable our schools to reduce their energy consumption and carbon emissions”.

In her post, Newman added: “We delivered. Schools built, sites found, estates managed, complex land transactions completed that others had written off as impossible.

‘Punching above its weight’

“Sometimes unglamorous, technically difficult work that rarely makes headlines but genuinely changes communities. I couldn’t be prouder of it all.”

She also noted that LocatED “punches well above its weight in improving accessibility to the profession and creating genuine career pathways”.

She pointed to its apprenticeship and graduate programmes, which “opened doors for people who might otherwise have found the property profession a rather unwelcoming place”.

Accounts show LocatED was given a budget of just over £9 million in 2024-25. Around £2.2 million was spent on “project related pre-acquisition costs for sites [and] mixed-use developments”.

A further £5.4 million went towards employee costs. Newman was paid between £220,000 and £225,000. She was handed between £40,000 and £45,000 in performance-related pay.

Her wages eclipse those of Acland-Hood, who took home £180,000 to £185,000 last year.