Did you know 1 in 4 people each year will face a mental health problem of some kind (Mind, 2024)? This number is rising and as owners of 10% of the NHS estate, we know that we have an important role to play in helping to tackle this.

NHS Property Services has 3,000 buildings across England - that is a lot of space that can be used to help improve community wellbeing.

Social prescribing is one way of doing this and is something we - and our NHS partners - are very passionate about.

We’ve come a long way since 2020 when we launched a programme to transform vacant spaces in our buildings into indoor and outdoor hubs for all sorts of activities. These included therapy, gardening groups, food banks, baby banks and exercise. In our first year, we developed 21 sites. By the time this financial year ends in March 2024, we’ll have developed over 100 which we’re so proud of.

Thousands of people across the country have felt the tangible benefits that community-based activities have on improving wellbeing. They also really help to tackle health inequalities.

We don’t transform anything on our own; we work closely with ICBs, Trusts and the third sector to identify suitable locations and redesign spaces. This often involves a mixture of reconfigurations, extensions and refurbishments to make sure each site meets the needs of the local community and we invest time into building strong relationships and truly understanding the local situation.

Take a look at this interactive map to see where our sites are and find out more about each one.

What have we learned that could help you?

Over the past four years, we’ve learned a lot about how to identify possible spaces, manage the development process (including financing and leasing), working with the third sector and running a successful hub.

We want to share our learnings with others so we can work together to drive social prescribing forward and enable others to launch and manage their own hubs. If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, please sign up to our webinar on Social Prescribing Day 2024, 14^th March.

We’ll be speaking alongside Janis Gibson from Castle Point Association of Voluntary Services to walk you through how to set up and manage a social prescribing site and you’ll have the chance to ask us questions as well.

You can find more helpful resources on our website. Keep an eye on it as we’ll be adding more content to this page over the coming months, including a toolkit with tips and templates to help you right funding applications and ask for donations.

Some of our newest sites

The sites we’ve developed range in size and use and provide a wide range of services including mental health services, baby banks and wraparound services, sensory rooms and gardens, plus community allotments and kitchen space for local charities. Here are some examples:

• Flourish Wellbeing Hub: We created a community based social prescribing hub in Wallasey for a range of health and wellbeing services supporting vulnerable people, facilitated by Citizens Advice. Services include financial and legal advice, family and carers supports, mental health services and fitness activities. Watch the video to find out more.
• The Unity Centre: We redeveloped vacant space at Whitton Clinic in Ipswich to create a vibrant community hub. The space provides a range of wellbeing services including emotional and practical support for families and refugees, fitness classes and walking groups, and a reading charity aiming to improve literacy across the town. The site also hosts a community cafe providing rehabilitation support to recovering veterans. Read the case study.
• Talke Health Centre: We developed a new outdoor space at Talke Health Clinic for the local community to learn gardening skills like planting and caring for vegetables in raised beds. Read the case study.

What do different community groups want from community spaces?

As well as our practical efforts, in October 2022, in partnership with The Health Creation Alliance, we published a research report to get a better understanding of what matters most to communities in terms of the spaces that support their wellbeing. The Health Creation Alliance conducted interviews and surveys with ten community groups that often have poorer health outcomes, to:

• Uncover what it is about spaces, and the processes involved in making the spaces available, that helps or hinders communities to create health.
• Identify some of the common factors that many different communities value about spaces as well as some of the different factors that matter to particular types of communities.

The report highlights eight common themes that matter to these communities in creating and using spaces. It also contains a case study on each community group so we can better understand the nuances and similarities that exist. You can find the full report, a summary, the case studies and other resources, here.

This report was a follow up to our first report with The King’s Fund that we published in November 2020. This study revealed how the NHS can carry out small changes to make better use of its estate to better support the health and wellbeing of local communities. You can find a summary of the report, here.

You can find out more about how to transform spaces for community use on our website which has a range of helpful resources.

If you’d like any advice or want to chat about how we can best use the NHS estate for social prescribing, please do get in touch. You can contact our Customer Service Centre who will direct your query to me or my colleagues.