Below are the latest 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.
Apprenticeship Challenge
On April 28, 2022, NHS England and NHS Improvement along with Health Education England launched the new NHS Estates and Facilities Apprenticeship Challenge. To support the greater use of apprenticeships in estates and facilities, our challenge is for NHS employers and wholly owned subsidiaries to create 1,000 new apprenticeships starts in 2022/23.
All details are available on the NHS England and NHS Improvement website, and the NHS Estates Collaboration Hub. This includes the joint letter from Simon Corben and Jane Hadfield (Health Education England) along with the guidance and toolkit documents. A national webinar took place on April 28 to support the launch. This was recorded and is now available along with the slides and FAQs document. Please see the NHS Estates Collaboration Hub for further details.
Estates Returns Information Collection (ERIC)
The 2021/22 ERIC is now open.
We appreciate and value the hard work which you and your teams put into completing this collection.
The Backlog Maintenance (BLM) data needed to be submitted by 29 April 2022 to enable the enhanced audit to begin. However, there are still a number of E&F teams which need to submit this information. Reminders have been sent to the teams concerned requesting them to review and submit this data no later than May 13. We would like to thank those E&F teams which have submitted the BLM data.
The remainder of the ERIC collection will remain open until July 1, 2022.
Please contact: [email protected] in the event of any queries regarding this year’s collection.
NHS Chef 2022 – Three Weeks Left
There are now three weeks left to submit applications for the NHS Chef 2022 Competition. This is open to chefs working in the NHS, whether employed directly by the NHS or a third party. Please see the NHS Estates Collaboration Hub for details of the entry process, application forms and the terms and conditions. Applications need to be sent to [email protected] by Friday, May 31, 2022.
National Standards of Healthcare Cleanliness
The new National Standards of Healthcare Cleanliness were published in April 2021.
The deadline for compliance was May 4, 2022 for acute and mental health Trusts. Primary care and care homes are expected to achieve compliance by November 4, 2022. Please look out for further bespoke guidance and tools which will follow.
Living with Covid: Staff Testing Update
Following Government announcements on Living with Covid, NHS England has written to NHS leaders to set out our approach to delivering the UK Health Security Agency’s (UKHSA) advice in relation to staff and patient testing. It confirms that from April 1, asymptomatic patient facing staff should continue to test twice weekly using Lateral Flow Devices (LFDs). Symptomatic NHS staff should test themselves using LFDs. LFD tests will continue to be available through the gov.uk portal for NHS staff in England. Read the full letter here.
Case Studies
We are continuing to review all areas of the NHS Estates Collaboration Hub, both the format in some areas as well as the general content. This includes the case studies area. As part of this process we would welcome some additional content. If you have
successfully delivered an estates and facilities related project that could offer fellow E&F teams further insight into best practice and shared learning then we would like to hear from you. If you are interested then please see the Hub for further details and the required template. Alternatively, contact: [email protected], marking for the attention of Joy Heaps and Tom McHugh.
Mailboxes – New E-mail Addresses
The e-mail addresses for both the National Estates and Facilities Team and the NHS Estates Collaboration Hub have been updated as follows:
National Webinars
Please note the following dates in your diaries:
• May 26 - NHS Estates Strategies (rescheduled)
• June 30 - NHS Estates and Facilities Resilience (rescheduled)
• July 28 - Fire Safety
• September 29 - Digital Estate
• November 24 - The Great Food Good Health Programme, including NHS Chef 2022.
The joining links will be sent to all listed E&F contacts. NHS staff who would like to attend these sessions can also contact: [email protected] to request an invitation. All of the sessions outlined above will take place from 11am until 12:30pm.
The recordings of the recent national webinars; Modern Energy Partners (April 25), NZC - Launch of the Delivery Groups (April 27), Apprenticeship Challenge (April 28) and Compressed Medical Oxygen Manifold Upgrade Project (April 28) are all available from the NHS Estates Collaboration Hub.
NHS Estates and Facilities Team - Monthly Bulletin
The most recent monthly Estates and Facilities bulletin was issued on April 29. The bulletin provides updates directly from NHS England and NHS Improvement’s Estates and Facilities Team including the latest guidance, health technical memoranda and policy developments affecting your work, as well as celebrating the successes of the wider E&F community. NHS staff can register to receive future editions of the newsletter.
NHS England and NHS Improvement National Estates Team: Collaboration Hub
The Collaboration Hub is a protected space for local NHS estates and facilities 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].
We have been arranging masterclasses to help registered members understand and navigate the Hub more effectively. If you are interested in attending one of these sessions then please e-mail the above mailbox.
If your e-mail address has changed over the past year (perhaps to .nhs.net), or you have moved to another NHS Trust then please e-mail us with the details: ([email protected]) so that we can update our records.
You can also follow our latest news and updates on the NHS Estates and Facilities LinkedIn page.
