Guidance

Land and buildings collection tool guidance for diocesan users

Updated 9 November 2023

Applies to England

What is the land and buildings collection tool?

The Land and buildings collection tool (LBCT) is an online form that collects information about all of the land and buildings used by academy trusts and their academies.

This year’s LBCT deadline, 7 November 2023, has passed. Thank you to all of the trust’s who submitted on time. If you’ve still got to complete and submit your return, log into your return, use this link below:

Your role

You will need to review the LBCT return for all academies with church owned land where you have been assigned the diocesan user role. This involves checking that the information the trust has entered and the document uploaded is accurate and complete.

You will only be able to see information and supporting documents relating to church owned land for any academy that has nominated you as a diocese checker.

Getting set up on the system

Existing users

If you already have the diocesan user role and your email address has not changed, you will be able to access the online form when this becomes available. You will be able to access the form using last year’s log in details.

New users

Please contact the education office of your church authority, as they approve all new diocesan user role requests. Once they’ve done this, we’ll set up your account within 5 working days and will email you with your login details.

If you do not have an account, please contact your education office as soon as possible

All users

Log in to your account as soon as you can to confirm that your details are correct and that you can navigate around the form.

Contact your academy trusts early, to:

• check that they have the correct contact details for you
• agree timescales, deadlines, and roles and responsibilities

Using the form

1. the trust preparer or approver will send you the church owned land part of the return for you to review

2. log in to review the form and any documents they’ve linked to it

3. if you require any amendments, you can reject it, along with your reasons for rejection. The approver will then make the changes and resend the form to you.

4. once you’re happy with the form, you approve it

5. you can then submit the return to the DfE, or ask the trust approver to do this

6. once the form has been submitted, you and the trust will get an email from DfE confirming receipt

Your dashboard

When you log in, you will be presented with a dashboard. This year, the dashboard includes a new ‘Submitted to DfE’ column. This will show you if a trust has submitted its return to DfE or not.

This is an example of how the dashboard will look.

A diocese user example dashboard

If any trusts are missing from your dashboard, please speak to the trust concerned to check that they have:

*added a church owned land occupancy * added you as a user * entered your email address correctly with no spaces or extra letters – this is the same email address you use to log into the LBCT and the one we will use for correspondence with you

Reviewing the information

When you click on the academy trust name you will be taken to their dashboard. From there you can see the trust and its academies. Click on any link with church owned land and you will be taken to the ‘review’ page. This shows:

• summary of the church owned land for that trust

• any related documentation, for example: a site map and church supplemental agreement or the Land registry register of title

You can also review the information via the ‘download return data’ link.

Trusts are required to provide details of any tangible non-land and building leases they have at 31 August 2023. As a diocese user, you will not need to sign off that element of the return, you will only see and review any ‘church-owned’ land data and document that the trust has entered.

You cannot edit the church owned land information: you can only accept it or reject it.

If you are not happy with the information in the form or any linked documents, select the ‘reject’ button and give your reasons for rejection. Make sure you provide sufficient details in the rejection comment so that the academy users can act upon this.

The trust will get an email alert, but you should speak to them to discuss the changes you want, in order to avoid any delays with the form.

All academy users can now adjust the form for any church owned land rejection issues. However, the trust approver will still need to review the return before it is resubmitted back for diocesan review.

When you are happy that all of the information entered in the form is accurate and complete, click the ‘accept’ button. The status will change to ‘Ready to submit to DfE‘.

You need to repeat the review process for all academy trusts on your dashboard

Submitting the return

When the trust and all of its academies have a status of ‘ready to submit to DfE’ the dashboard will display a green ‘Submit to DfE’ button.

This button can be pressed by either yourself or the academy trust approver, depending on who is the last user in the form. Please speak with your academy trust approver to agree who will submit the return to DfE.

Once clicked, the status will change to ‘Submitted to DfE’ and the form will become read-only. You will not be able to make any changes after the form has been submitted. Both you and the trust users will receive an email to confirm that the return has been successfully submitted.

Top tips

• agree timelines and ‘roles & responsibilities’ with your academy trusts as soon as possible

• make sure that the trusts have the correct email contact details for you – double check the email address they hold

• if you reject the form, contact the trust to ensure they understand the reasons for rejection

• check your emails every morning: we’ll send you a summary report every day where something has changed which needs your review or sign-off

Do you have any queries?

Please see our main LBCT webpage for how to contact us, otherwise, please contact us using our enquiry form. Please select ‘Academies financial returns’ and reference the ‘LBCT Diocese’ in your query via this link.