Running an estate — Martyn's Law Evidence Kit

Everything in the single-premises guides still applies to each premises. This is about the parts that only exist once there is more than one.

The dashboard

Every premises the organisation runs, with its review status. Once you have made groups, it can be filtered to show one group at a time. It is the screen that answers which of these needs me this month.

A premises shows as review due from 30 days before its next annual review date, and stays that way until a review is recorded.

Somebody with scoped access sees the same dashboard with only their own premises on it, and a count telling them how many of the organisation's premises they can see. That is honest rather than hidden — they know they are looking at part of a larger estate.

Illustration. The estate dashboard. Review status is the column that drives the month's work.

Groups

Make groups for the way your organisation actually divides up — regions, deaneries, areas, site types. A premises belongs to one group, groups do not nest, and the reasoning behind that limit is in People and access.

Groups earn their keep twice: they let you filter the dashboard to one region or site type at a time, and they let you scope a colleague to a whole region in one move, including premises added to that region later.

The roll-up export

One document covering the whole organisation: every live premises, its tier steer, its procedure status, when it was last reviewed and when the next review is due.

It exists because trustees, a diocesan board or a council committee ask where are we across all of it, and answering that by opening sixty premises pages one at a time is how the question stops getting asked.

It lists premises one after another rather than under group headings. Archived premises are left out, because a closed building is not an outstanding action, and somebody with scoped access gets a roll-up of only what they can see, marked on its face as partial.

Archiving, which is not deleting

When a premises closes, is sold, or stops being yours to look after, archive it. Archiving is reversible, and buildings do come back.

What happens to it	Archived
Its decision records, drill logs, reviews and packs	All kept, exactly as they were
Exporting its evidence	Still works
Appearing on the dashboard	No
Appearing in the roll-up	No
Getting review reminders	No
Counting against what you pay for	No

That last row is the practical one: archiving a premises frees up the venue you are paying for, so an estate that shrinks stops paying for buildings it no longer has.

If you genuinely want the organisation deleted rather than a premises archived, that is a different request — an owner writes to us from the address on their account and it is done within 30 days, as section 10(b) of the Service Schedule sets out. Export first, and save any drill photographs you want to keep, because the export does not contain them. A single entry that should never have been recorded is a narrower request, handled by hand under section 9 of the Service Schedule.

A sensible working pattern

Set the groups up before inviting anyone. Scoping people to groups is much less work than scoping them to forty individual premises, and it keeps working as the estate changes.
Work the dashboard monthly, not annually. Anything showing review due gets a review recorded — good practice, not required at standard tier, and most of what the dashboard is for.
Regenerate packs when buildings or key holders change, not on a schedule. The trigger is a change, not a calendar.
Run the roll-up before the meeting that asks for it, and attach it to the minutes. It is a better answer than a verbal summary and it takes a moment.
Archive as things close. Left undone, you pay for buildings you no longer have and your roll-up lists actions nobody will take.

Larger than 150 premises

The published price covers up to 150 premises. Above that, tell us about the estate — organisations that size usually want a conversation and a schedule their procurement team can work with anyway.