“The less you spend on buildings, the bigger your backlog maintenance bill gets.”
That line from the NHS Providers and PAConsulting report says it all.
Our forthcoming Watling Consulting research – Unlocking the Public Estate shows the same pattern across local government: under-maintained buildings drain productivity, inflate future costs and undermine resilience. Yet maintenance remains politically invisible i.e. it’s easily cut, rarely celebrated.
Public buildings are the backbone of public services – hospitals, schools, courts and offices that enable everything else to function. Treating maintenance as optional is short-termist and costly.
Deferred maintenance isn’t an engineering problem, it’s a strategic one.
Well-maintained assets enable service transformation, support net-zero goals, and underpin the productivity of every public service.
It’s time to shift perspective and invest in the long-term health of our social infrastructure.
