Background to the report

The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) leads the UK’s diplomatic, development and consular work around the world. To support this, it manages an overseas estate of approximately 6,500 properties, mostly located in 282 locations (known as posts) in 180 countries and territories. The number of posts has increased from 270 in 2018-19 to 282 in April 2024.

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In March 2024, FCDO’s overseas estate, including owned and long-term leased properties, was valued at £2.5 billion. As at December 2024, FCDO had more than 2,200 UK staff based overseas (27% of FCDO’s 8,273 UK staff), and employed 9,143 country-based staff.

FCDO regards its overseas estate as central to supporting the achievement of UK government objectives, by facilitating diplomatic engagements and providing a platform for promoting UK industry and services. The overseas estate also hosts over 35 other UK government departments, the devolved administrations and other bodies requiring a presence overseas. This comprises 5,200 staff. FCDO aims for its estate to be smaller and more efficient, with lower running costs and reduced carbon emissions.

Scope of the report

This report examines whether FCDO has a robust approach to managing its overseas estate. It considers whether FCDO:

  • has a clear overarching strategy for meeting its current and future overseas estate requirements
  • is set up to manage its overseas estate effectively
  • is managing its maintenance programme and capital projects effectively

Video summary

Leena Mathew, the report director, summarises our findings.

Conclusions

FCDO’s overseas estate is essential for delivery of the UK government’s global objectives, helping to facilitate diplomacy and promote UK industry abroad. Yet much of the FCDO’s overseas estate is in a poor and deteriorating condition, and a maintenance backlog of nearly half a billion pounds has built up over time.

FCDO has rightly focused on making repairs to ensure its buildings are safe and legally compliant. However, this has come at the expense of longer-term investment to improve the estate or reduce its cost, and inevitably this compromises the long-term value for money of this spending.

FCDO has in recent years taken positive actions, including improving its understanding of the true condition of its overseas estate. However, it still needs to do more to achieve value for money from its estate. The significant challenges it needs to address include poor and incomplete data at post and portfolio level, capacity and capability issues and the need to develop a coherent strategy and delivery plan setting out how it will achieve its future estate needs.

FCDO has invested in its estate using proceeds from selling land and buildings, but there are now no more significant assets to sell. FCDO now needs to work with HMT to take decisions about what it can realistically afford. It must find ways to identify efficiencies, reduce costs, adapt its estates portfolio, or accept the decline in condition of its overseas estate.

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Publication details

Press release

View press release (23 May 2025)

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