> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://help.resouris.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://help.resouris.com/set-up-what-you-schedule/lend-a-space.md).

# Lend a space to another department

When one department's room sits idle on a Tuesday afternoon and another needs somewhere to run a list, the **availability pool** is how the two find each other without a phone call.

**Where:** sidebar → **Scheduling** → **Availability pool** (`/ui/admin/space-availability`).

> ⓘ Its sibling, **Availability view**, answers *"who is free?"*. This page answers *"what is free?"* — and *"what has been free all year?"*

## What counts as spare

A spare is **an authored session, unreserved, in a space its owner has offered**. All three conditions have to hold, and each one removes a way the page could mislead you.

> ⛔ **YOU LEND A SESSION, NOT A GAP.** An earlier version measured a flat bookable day minus its reservations, which produced true statements nobody could act on — "Seminar Room, free 08:15–18:00, 9.8 hours" is not an offer, because there is no session there to give anybody. A borrowing department does not want ten hours of a room; it wants Tuesday afternoon. A space with no sessions defined now says so instead of advertising its emptiness.

> ⛔ **THE "LENDABLE" FLAG IS PERMISSION, NOT AVAILABILITY** — and it is **off** by default. Measuring spare capacity and offering it are different acts. A lendable space may be fully committed; an idle space may deliberately not be lendable because it holds somebody's equipment. The pool lists only spaces you have offered. The trend below it lists every space, because the trend is how you decide which ones to flag.

Two more things are deliberately excluded:

* **A briefing is a reservation.** A standing invitation holds its slot and nothing more — it carries no assignment row by design, so a naive reading calls a room the whole department is standing in empty. One seminar room measured 132 of 132 sessions free on exactly that mistake.
* **Channels are not capacity.** Working-from-home and video spaces are infinitely available, so they are not scarce and cannot be lent. You cannot give somebody a meeting link they already have.

## Claiming one

A borrowing department picks a spare session and claims it. Claiming **and** releasing both need `admin.room_reservation.claim`, held by `tenant_admin`. ⓘ There is no separate release permission — whoever may take a session may give it back, which is the behaviour you want: a permission you can only use in one direction leaves claims stranded.

> ⓘ **The picker offers the BORROWER's service lines, not the owner's.** A claim says "we are taking this session to run *our* work in it". Offering the lender's lines would let somebody file a claim the solver then tries and fails to satisfy.

A claim writes a grant recording the owning department, the borrowing department, the window, and the service line it was taken for. **Releasing** it hands the session back. Both acts emit audit events — `room_reservation.claimed` and `room_reservation.released` — so who took what, when, and gave it back is answerable later.

Already-claimed sessions are not offered again, to anybody. Leaving them in the list was an earlier mistake that let two departments both think they had Tuesday.

## Before you rely on a claim

> ⚠️ **A SPARE SESSION IS NOT A PROMISE THAT YOUR SERVICE LINE CAN RUN IN IT.** Equipment decides that, and most lists need a machine wheeled in. The page footnotes this rather than hiding it: check the space has — or can take — what your line requires. See [Mandatory service lines and equipment](/set-up-what-you-schedule/equipment-mandatory-and-maintenance.md).

## Related

* The catalogue itself, and what the Trust-assigned / ad-hoc distinction means: [Spaces — the catalogue](/set-up-what-you-schedule/manage-spaces.md).
* Lending **people** rather than space: [Lend staff between departments](/run-the-roster/cross-department-cover.md).
* How spare time is measured, and why these figures agree with the utilisation page: [Throughput and attendance](/understand-your-capacity/throughput-and-attendance.md).


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