National Estates & Facilities Management Weekly Update

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Below are this week’s key messages from the national NHS Estates & Facilities Team. Please email any questions or comments you have on any of these items to [email protected] or follow the links where provided.

 

COVID-19: General Update and the National Vaccination Programme

We are seeing positive news in terms of reduced levels of confirmed infections and hospital admissions. The national Vaccination Programme also goes from strength to strength. This is welcome news on both fronts. 

However, we must not lose sight of the critical message which we have been sharing over the past few weeks in that estates and facilities teams work hard to ensure that patients remain safe. At the same time we must not lose sight of the need to ensure that our people all remain safe.

We have developed a pack which is available now for use by estates and facilities teams to encourage staff vaccination take-up. Please review and share this information across your teams. A pdf version of this pack is accessible to members from the Knowledge Base section of this website. You must be logged in as a member. Click here to be redirected. The PowerPoint version has also been circulated directly to members. 

Prerana Issar, NHS Chief People Officer, is also taking a close interest in the health  and wellbeing of estates and facilities teams.  This applies especially to the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines where weekly surveys have been introduced to help monitor and maximise the effect of the communications in place to ensure their effectiveness. These responses from health and care staff are extremely important in helping to inform NHS England and NHS Improvement of current perspective from the front line. 

A link to this week’s survey is below and again we would be grateful for your responses – the survey will take less than five minutes to complete.

Click here to complete the survey.

Online Estates & Facilities Forum

This is scheduled for March 16 and good progress is being made with the arrangements which we will be launching soon. We can confirm that the agenda for the day will include Prerana Issar, NHS England and NHS Improvement Chief People Officer, at 10:30am and Edward Argar, Minister of State for Health, at 11:30am. There will also be sessions involving Simon Corben, Sandra Easton, Adrian Eggleton, Craig McWilliam and Fiona Daly. 

Please hold the date now. The agenda and registration arrangements will be launched imminently. 

Health and Care Bill - White Paper

The Health and Care 2021 White Paper has now been published.

Estates and facilities services are not specifically mentioned, but capital funding and the NHS Food report are. Further information on the White Paper more generally will be shared on the Collaboration Hub soon.

With regard to hospital food, the White Paper is supportive of the recommendation arising from the Independent Review of NHS Hospital Food in putting hospital food standards on a statutory footing. For the first time this will deliver mandatory minimum standards for the provision of good hydration and nutrition in the NHS. The White Paper also proposes to grant the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care powers to adopt secondary legislation that will implement the national standards for food across the NHS.

 

NHS England and NHS Improvement – Estates Team Questionnaire

This remains open until Friday February 19. We have kept the survey as short as possible and can be completed in a matter of minutes. It is really important for us to obtain as much feedback as possible from the estates and facilities community. We will share the outcome and action plan on the Collaboration Hub in due course. The questionnaire can be accessed here

The NHS Estates and Facilities team thank you in advance for taking the time to help us shape how we best support the profession going forward. If you have not yet completed, please try and find a few minutes to complete in the next couple of days.

 

Operational Pressures

These remain as previously reported and are outlined below.

 

Waste Management

The standard operating procedure for waste management was updated and published by NHS England and NHS Improvement on January 18, 2021. This document has been updated to reflect the National Vaccination Programme which is now well underway.

The document can be accessed here.

The key message in this area is to ensure that all waste is appropriately segregated. Further messaging on this issue was shared via the NHS England and NHS Improvement Health and Care Leaders Update bulletin on January 27, 2021.

NHS Trusts need to complete the daily waste management survey (Monday – Friday). This is critical to us as it enables the national NHS Estates Team to provide system wide assurances to both the DHSC and Civil Contingencies Secretariat. The informational also enables the team to help and support much earlier in the process as appropriate. Any queries about the daily waste management survey should be sent to [email protected] 

 

Oxygen

We need to ensure that the key messages recently shared previously on the Collaboration Hub regarding the management of oxygen services continue to be enacted by estates teams locally. This will help to manage the current pressures and as ever the members of the National Oxygen Team will be on hand to advise and support as necessary.

Our thanks to the profession for your help and support in this area where we are now seeing a continuing improvement in the situation.

 

Scrubs

Support is still needed to ensure that scrubs are not being hoarded and returned to the laundry system in a timely manner. It is also important to ensure that scrubs are not disposed of either and that they are returned for laundering. This situation has become more challenging over the past week. We are now seeing genuine issues and problems in the laundry system. Any help and support which estates and facilities teams can provide here will be greatly appreciated.

 

NHS England and NHS Improvement National Estates Team: Collaboration Hub

The Collaboration Hub is a protected space for local NHS estates teams to access key information as well as to collaborate and to share ideas and successes. Access to the Collaboration Hub for individuals from local NHS estates teams can be arranged by e-mailing [email protected] 

 

Thank You

Our thanks to all of those working in estates and facilities for all that you in maintaining the NHS estate, facilitating patient care as well as supporting the response to the current pandemic. The service could not function without you.



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