Public estates space and facilities
We will work together as partners to ensure our collective estate is managed most effectively to support and enable more joined-up, easier to access care, support the aims and priorities of the system and ensure better, safer care for patients.
The ICS has developed an Estates Strategy which sets out how we will work together to do this. It presents the collective work undertaken at provider, commissioner, and local authority place level both individually and in partnership with one another to improve the quality and outcomes derived from the public estate. The strategy is iterative to reflect subsequent funding requirements and priorities of an ever-evolving estate which looks to shift care closer to where it is needed and most suitably delivered aligning to many of our ICS priorities. Our Estates Strategy sits within the wider context of national priorities including; Carter Report, NHS Long Term Plan, Net-Zero NHS, Place-Based Systems of Care, One Public Estate, and the Naylor Review.
Our key areas of focus to deliver the priorities of the Estates Strategy are:
- capital planning and prioritisation: we will continue to review, update, and evolve our process to prioritise our major capital schemes; develop a process for the management of business-as-usual schemes; review any alternative funding opportunities available to the system; monitor the outputs of Section 106 & Community Infrastructure Levy; and look to interface with the digital workstream to explore how we can advance our digital capabilities
- greener delivery aligned to the ICS Green Plan: we will focus on areas such as creating a multi-purpose, biodiverse estate with greenspaces utilized for our local population, staff, and visitors; transitioning to low/zero carbon solutions for the provision of energy services; improving local air quality and reducing carbon emissions from travelling sustainably; and partnership working to improve efficiency and eliminate carbon
- disposals and void management: develop, monitor, and keep under review our Strategic Disposals Tracker; review our system void space to identify potential projects that could support better utilisation of space; work in conjunction with the capital workstream to monitor schemes, projects, and programmes where opportunity exists to release surplus land; develop greater partnership and collaborative working with our local authorities to explore opportunities to identify projects to reduce voids; explore alternative ways of delivering our clinical services, including the use of digitization; and explore opportunities to develop agile working across our system
- effective asset management: work in conjunction with the disposal and void workstream to drive the reduction of void space; develop a systemwide approach to ERIC data recording, analysis, metrification, and reporting; commit to developing our SHAPE atlas in order to create a single repository for our estates data; and generate a better understanding of backlog maintenance liabilities and continuous management and reduction.
Our key aims are:
- working towards all Trusts operating with a maximum of 35% non-clinical space and 2.5% unoccupied space with alignment to Trust Premises Assurance Models
- the NHS Carbon Footprint for the emissions under direct control, net zero by 2040
- the NHS Carbon Footprint ‘Plus’ for the emissions under influence, net zero by 2045.