During a period of tremendous change for the NHS with the emergence of Integrated Care Partnerships (ICSs) and Primary Care Networks (PCNs), as well as the impact of Covid-19 on care provision and estates, different types of spaces are required to deliver care to local communities.

We are committed to working closely with our partners across ICSs and PCNs in the East to understand the needs, challenges and opportunities that exist within your communities. We want to support you with your clinical strategies by not only ensuring your estate needs are met, but to really help you get the most from your estate so you can deliver excellent patient care.

We want to ensure that NHS space is used well and is flexible to ensure maximum use by not just clinical partners, but also our hard-working voluntary sector. We see ourselves very much as an anchor institution in the areas we support, procuring and employing locally to invest in the wider economic and social health of the community.

My role as your Regional Partnership Director is to support my colleagues in the East of England region to optimise and transform the NHS estate in line with your clinical strategies.

My ethos, shared by my NHSPS colleagues across the East, is to provide ‘can-do’, solutions focussed support to delivering transformational estates change with our NHS partners.

Looking back as the past 18 months I am extremely proud of how different parts of the NHS have come together to help fight the spread of Covid-19. Strong collaboration across the region has helped NHSPS teams support 27 vaccination sites, deliver space for 300+ additional beds, and answer 50+ additional space requests for hot and cold sites, testing and more. We have done this through the rapid recommissioning of vacant space and refurbishing clinical and non-clinical spaces, optimising the NHS estate to adapt to healthcare needs.

Looking beyond Covid-19 support, we want to apply the learnings and new ways of working we’ve developed in the past year to further optimise the NHS estate. In the past year we were delighted to deliver 12 transformational estate projects across the East region, ranging from refurbishments to developing new social prescribing hubs. We now turn our attentions to expand our ‘Healthy Places’ programme, delivering 34 projects that will progress the delivery of £61.5 million in capital investment, improve 11,600sqm of space, and positively impact 156,000 patients and community groups across the region.

Looking at how we're supporting each ICS, here are some examples of the ways we're enabling better care in your area:

• Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes - supporting the ICS hub strategy, particularly at Biggleswade and Steppingley, and support the business case for a new mental health facility at Bedford Health Village.
• Cambridge and Peterborough - completing the acquisition and fit-out of Gemini House, Ely as the new HQ for the CCG.
• Hertfordshire and West Essex - completing the extension of Spring House Medical Centre, Welwyn Garden City.
• Mid and South Essex - supporting the transformation of primary care space and the Integrated Medical Centre programme.
• Norfolk and Waveney - completing major capital projects in Norwich, Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft, and helping to transform primary care provision and supporting mental health community services.
• Suffolk and North East Essex - continue to support the transformation plans for Clacton Community Hospital and complete a major community social prescribing hub at Whitton Clinic, Ipswich

If you need assistance with anything, please do not hesitate to get in touch with me directly or contact our Customer Support Centre. I look forward to our continued partnership in 2021/22.

With such a huge amount of work taking place we want to make sure you’re kept up to date on NHSPS news.

Many of you should be receiving our regular emails as an NHSPS customer, but if you're not receiving the communications and you’d like to, please sign up for our newsletter.

Join our mailing list