Education estates are under more pressure than most. Buildings are ageing, funding is tight, and the people who use them, from students and staff to parents and research teams, expect them to work every day of term. Appointing the right estates leader has rarely mattered more, and it is rarely straightforward.
The scale of the challenge
The published figures give a sense of what estates leaders in education are inheriting. The Department for Education estimated the condition need of the whole school estate in England at £11.4 billion, the National Audit Office reported. In higher education, the NAO found that £5.6 billion would be needed to return all university-owned research infrastructure in England to a fully operational condition.
Behind those numbers sit daily decisions: which roof to replace this summer, which laboratory to keep running, which building to close or sell. An estates leader in education spends much of their time deciding what not to fund, and explaining those choices to governors, trustees and academic colleagues.
Why education estates roles are hard to fill
Three things make these appointments difficult.
- The calendar: most major works have to fit into holidays, so programme planning and contractor control carry more risk than in many other sectors.
- Governance: decisions pass through committees, boards and funders, and a leader who is technically strong but uncomfortable with governance will struggle.
- Breadth: in smaller institutions and trusts, the Head of Estates is often strategist, project manager and compliance lead at once, with a small team.
Candidates from other sectors can be excellent, but they need to show they understand the rhythms of an academic year and the expectations of education governance.
Writing the brief
The brief is where most education searches succeed or fail. Before going to market, agree internally on the answers to a few questions:
- Is the priority capital delivery, compliance recovery, operational improvement or long-term strategy? Rank them.
- What decisions will this person own, and which will sit with the executive or the board?
- What does the estate need over the next three to five years: growth, consolidation, decarbonisation or recovery?
- Who does the role report to, and how often will it present to governors or trustees?
- What would make the appointment a failure in the first year?
Tools such as our stakeholder alignment check can help the finance, operations and HR sides of the panel agree before the role goes live.
Assessing candidates
At senior level, qualifications and building lists are the entry requirement. The appointment turns on judgement. Structure the interviews around real decisions:
- A capital project the candidate shaped from business case to handover, and what went wrong.
- How they established compliance assurance on an estate they inherited.
- How they ranked backlog maintenance when funding covered only part of it.
- A difficult conversation with a governing body, academic department or head teacher.
- A restructure or service change they led, and how they brought the team with them.
Ask for the evidence behind each answer: the numbers, the timescales and the trade-offs. Candidates who describe what their team did in the first person plural, without ever saying what they decided, need probing.
Running the process
Education recruitment often runs through committees, and that can slow things down. The average time to hire in the UK climbed to 12 weeks in spring 2026, up from 10 weeks in autumn 2025, according to Totaljobs. Senior estates candidates are usually employed and in demand, and a slow process loses them.
Fix the interview dates before the role goes live, agree who has the final say, and keep candidates informed at every stage. If the role is confidential, or the market for it is thin, a retained search that approaches people who are not actively looking is usually the better route.
See how it works in practice
Our case study for the University of East London shows how an Assistant Director of Estates, Operations was appointed against a brief that combined service transformation with inclusive leadership. For the full approach, from brief to onboarding, download our Insights ebook Recruiting Estates Leaders.
Talk to Maxwell Stephens
Maxwell Stephens has specialised in Facilities Management, estates and workplace recruitment since 2006. If you are planning an FM, estates or workplace appointment, contact us for a confidential conversation, or read our case studies to see how comparable searches were run.
