Highlights included:
- Cost savings of £71 million achieved in 2023/4 compared with £45.9 million the previous year.
- Delivering over £150 m of value opportunities for the wider NHS by proactively engaging with Integrated Care Boards, and enabling the refurbishment or building of health facilities such as the new Chiswick Health Centre.
- The Healthy Places programme: progressing 250 projects with 70 completed on site.
- An 8.2 per cent reduction in carbon footprint.
- The launch of a ‘refreshed’ strategy which focuses on ‘the three pillars: a better estate; a brilliant service, and delivering better value for money for customers’.
NHS says the report reveals that it has ‘taken huge strides forward in enabling better adaption, assessment, and maintenance of the 3,000 buildings or 10 per cent of the NHS estate it owns’. It also enables the organisation to respond effectively to the Darzi Report, and prepare its plans to help deliver the 10-Year Health Plan expected in Spring 2025.
NHS Property Services says its new strategy ‘has a vision’ of it becoming ‘the first choice NHS estate service delivery organisation’. It said: “There are three pillars of delivery: a better estate: fit for the future; brilliant service; placing customers at the heart of everything we do; and unlocking value: understanding customer priorities and delivering value for money.”
Alongside these savings, NHSPS has increased its investment in the wider NHS estate, refurbishing or building new health facilities such as the joint development with Hounslow Council to create 55 affordable new homes for local NHS colleagues.
It added: “Our Healthy Places programme continues to deliver new-builds and refurbishments; the projects included investing £762,000 in supporting the North West to realise a critical neonatal ambulance service. There are a further 180 new builds and refurbishments on track for delivery over the next few years.”
In addition, reducing vacant space remains a key initiative; in 2023-24 the organisation reduced the total vacant space for the year by 42,000 m2.
NHSPS CEO, Martin Steele (pictured), said: “We have made excellent progress this year, and find ourselves in a much stronger place to deliver the property infrastructure needed to ‘Build an NHS Fit for the Future’. The launch of our thought leadership campaign last month focuses our organisation on how we can best help our customers to access the funding they need. Last year marked 10 years of our organisation supporting NHS customers and their communities, and in our eleventh year we have placed ourselves in a positive position to deliver great results in 2025.”
Emma Dexter, Interim Chief Financial officer at NHSPS, said: “Our vision of being the first-choice estate service delivery provider to the NHS, and our mission of unlocking value for the NHS, have been our continued focus this year. We have made significant progress in improving our capabilities, processes, and systems, to enable us to deliver more value to our customers and stakeholders and support the wider NHS agenda of integration, transformation, and sustainability.”