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.
Welcome Back
We hope you will have managed to benefit from a break during the Easter holiday period.
Apologies that this is the first update since the end of March. Our intention was to restart these updates following the Easter break during the week commencing April 12. However, non-urgent communications were paused for a week to mark the period of mourning in the run up to the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh.
COVID-19: General Update and the National Vaccination Programme
We would like to thank you for your continued engagement with the weekly surveys to date. The responses are really important in helping NHS England and NHS Improvement as an organisation to shape how we engage with our healthcare workforce.
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.
https://forms.office.com/r/cim3HdPCcA
We all look forward to life returning to more normality with the current situation continuing to improve. However, we as a profession need to ensure that we remain as safe as possible which will help to support the NHS as it increases the pace at which it returns to BAU. Please continue to make use of the resource materials which are available now for use by estates and facilities teams to encourage staff vaccination take-up. These can be accessed from the Collaboration Hub.
National Publications
We are pleased to confirm that a number of our documents have now cleared the NHS England and NHS Improvement publications process. Arrangements are now being finalised which will see the following document published in the near future; National Standards of Healthcare Cleanliness, an updated Waste Management SOP, Performance of Healthcare Cryogenic Liquid Oxygen Systems – mitigating the effects of current and future pandemic demand, as well as four technical standards and guidance documents.
Look out for the further details which will follow including the arrangements for national webinars.
We are hoping that the new National Standards of Healthcare Cleanliness document will be published early in the week commencing 26 April. In support of this we are hoping to focus the next national webinar (29 April at 11am) on this document. If you would like to attend this webinar please e-mail [email protected] marking for the attention of Linda Hood.
2020/21 ERIC
The latest collection was launched on April 14 and will remain open until July 1, 2021. This is a mandatory collection which NHS Trusts are required to comply with under the terms of Section 259 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012. The NHS Standard Contract also requires compliance with this collection in the manner and timescale set out.
Backlog Maintenance:
As a result of the total cost to eradicate backlog maintenance increasing by £2bn in the 2019-20 ERIC return, the validation process for the following metrics has undergone a review and new methodology will be in place for this year’s collection.
• Investment to reduce backlog maintenance (T03_08)
• Cost to eradicate high risk backlog (S04_01)
• Cost to eradicate significant risk backlog (S04_02)
• Cost to eradicate moderate risk backlog (S04_03)
• Cost to eradicate low risk backlog (S04_04)
Trusts are required to fully populate the above metrics by April 30, 2021. At this point, the data for these metrics will be extracted and an in-depth validation process will begin. This will include engagement by subject matter experts in the National Estates and Facilities Team to discuss the values submitted and where appropriate, how these were derived.
The remainder of the ERIC 20-21 collection will need to be submitted by July 1, 2021, with any adjustments to the above metrics to be inputted before this final deadline.
Further information is available in the latest news and data sections of the Collaboration Hub. This includes a short video which will be of interest to those responsible for compiling the ERIC data in NHS Trusts.
Government Property Month
Members of the National Oxygen Programme are also leading on a fringe event (April 28 at 1pm) as part of the Government Property Month. This will be an opportunity to outline their work in support of the COVID-19 response and the lessons learned. The event is free to attend and open to all – please register here.
Estates and Facilities – ‘Talking Heads’ Videos
We recently shared a number of short personal videos featuring a wide variety of roles across the estates and facilities spectrum. The week we would like to highlight Sam Bright – Estates officer.
Please do share these with your colleagues and if using social media, tag in the national team @EstatesNHS
A number of other roles will be filmed at the Manchester University Hospital NHS FT on April 27. These will be shared with you as soon as they are available.
Estates and Facilities Online Forum (on-demand sessions and feedback)
We hope you enjoyed the recent on-demand sessions involving Edward Argar MP, Minister of State for Health and the panel discussion of the Impact of COVID-19 and lessons learned, including what this means of Net Zero Carbon and the New Hospital Programme.
The following sessions involving Simon Corben’s overview and the panel discussion on Next Generation Estates Strategies, including delivering the Long Term Plan through ICSs, Primary Care and Disposals can now be accessed via the following links;
https://vimeo.com/526086202/752db4d099
https://vimeo.com/526153668/d427414122
To help with the planning for future events it would be appreciated if you could spare a few minutes to complete this short survey following the forum.
The forum survey will now remain open until Friday, April 30. Many thanks to those who have already submitted their feedback via this route.
Please follow the national NHS Estates and Infrastructure team on twitter @EstatesNHS
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]
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.
