The below Parliamentary question was asked by Nicholas Soames on 2016-09-13.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what progress his Department is making on the rationalisation of the NHS estate.
Mr Philip Dunne
The National Health Service estate represents both one of its largest assets, critical in supporting high quality services for patients, as well as one of its largest elements of its running costs.
As part of the Government’s wider public sector land programme, the Department is committed releasing surplus NHS land sufficient for delivering 26,000 houses by 2020 and raising £2 billion in receipts. The Department and the NHS have made good progress so far, having released land with capacity for over 3,000 homes by June 2016.
The Department is also committed to driving improvements in the operational efficiency of the NHS estate. Lord Carter of Coles’ report, Operational Productivity and Performance in English NHS Acute Hospitals: Unwarranted Variations, published in February 2016, sets out how acute trusts can improve productivity and achieve efficiency savings, including through reducing the proportion of the hospital estate that is made up of non-clinical services, and reducing under-utilisation. It highlighted that annual savings of up to £1 billion by 2020-21 were achievable by reducing current variations in estates and facilities management running costs.
The majority of the NHS estate is owned by individual NHS trusts and foundation trusts and it is for them to make decisions about their estate which best support their clinical priorities, in discussion with the commissioners of NHS services. This is part of the current process through which local NHS footprints are developing sustainability and transformation plans (STPs).
The Department and other national health organisations are providing a range of support measures to the NHS in delivering on the surplus land ambition, in implementing Lord Carter’s recommendations and in delivering high quality estates plans as part of the STP process.
In addition, the Department has commissioned Sir Robert Naylor to undertake an independent review of the NHS estate. He will produce a report in the autumn which will provide recommendations on how the NHS can achieve best value from NHS property, in alignment with the delivery of the vision set out in the NHS’s Five Year Forward View.
