Non-routine work is undertaken by contractors working to a schedule of rates tendered at the start of the year. In this way flexibility is maintained and costs kept very tightly under control
enhance the green estate
- building its asset base to a size that it can, in time, invest it in low risk investments to reduce its exposure to any future economic downturns
The Trust has developed a long term financial model that helps to work out expenditure requirements well into the future, the size of the asset base needed to fund the Trust and what level of total return is needed from those assets in order to be financially viable in the long term. They currently have a net asset value of £70m and plan to grow this to £120m (at today’s prices) by 2025 in order to put the Trust on a sound financial footing.
The applicability of the Milton Keynes Parks Trust model to other locations
The Trust get many enquiries about their model and whether it could provide a template for the long term management of public open space elsewhere. They are acutely aware that it is still early days and the real test will be whether, in one hundred years’ time, the Trust is still financially sound and still maintaining its green estate to the same high standards it is today.
Their model has a great deal to commend it including that it has:
- managed and continues to manage its green estate to a high standard. Essentially, it has one job to do and can focus on that job, and should be able to get better and more efficient at doing it every year.
- continued to be independent and self financing and can, therefore, plan ahead without fear of cuts in public sector funding or changes in political
priorities.
- managed its asset base well and, as a result, has grown at a faster rate than the increase in costs of managing the land.
- created and adequately funded sinking funds for major capital replacements.
- become well respected in the parks, forestry and landscape professions and is greatly valued by the people of Milton Keynes.
- recruited and retained a high calibre board of Trustees and staff.
A number of factors have been important in contributing to its early success and these need to be born in mind when considering applying the model elsewhere:
- The Trust appointed some very high calibre staff and attracted some very astute Trustees. It could have been very different if certain key individuals had not been involved in the Trust right from the start.
- Property in Milton Keynes has been a very good investment and, although there have been periods where the Trust’s property has not performed well, the Trust’s property portfolio has generated sufficient funds to pay for the maintenance of the green estate, to provide for the sinking funds and to increase the asset base.
- The high performance of the property portfolio has also enabled the Trust to cope with a number of unforeseen cost implications. For example, the Trust has only been able to recover a small percentage of the VAT it pays out; the cost of landfill has significantly affected annual litter collection costs; the
increase in cost of insurance, particularly public liability and employers liability; various storms and floods.
- The Trust has been very focused on building a robust and sustainable organisation and has not allowed anything to distract it from its cause. In the early days, the Trust acquired the strategic open space in Milton Keynes which presents its own management challenges that are different (not bigger or smaller) to those presented by small scale parcels of land pepper-potted around a town or city. It has relatively little formal, high maintenance parkland and neither does it have a backlog of repairs and maintenance that burden many parks authorities.
Two other key points of note are:
- The Trust has continued to take new parks and open spaces, and the developers have been willing and able to fund the endowment sums required by the Trust.
- The local authority in Milton Keynes has resolved that it would like the Trust to take on the management of its green space, and they are currently exploring how this can be brought about without jeopardising the viability of the Trust.
Whether the MKPT model would succeed elsewhere is difficult to say, a more in depth assessment would be needed. However, when one looks across the country at the sorry state of much of the public open space and the immense challenges and problems facing local authorities in particular, it is probably well worth considering.
Ousel Valley 16
Sheep are used as ‘mowers’
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