Published date: 16 December 2022
NHSPS offers customers reassurance over potential power failures
As we experience very cold temperatures across England, NHS Property Services (NHSPS) wants to reassure customers of our Business Continuity Plan in the unlikely event of demand outstripping supply, causing a power failure.
As well as our BCP, we undertake proactive measures to reduce the likelihood that customers experience a loss of power at their site. These include:
- Regular maintenance of all on-site generators in line with the recommended schedule to make sure they are in good working order.
- Load testing of generators to make sure they can power the building’s activities.
- Ensuring there is sufficient fuel available at site level to power site generators.
- Developing a site-specific Business Continuity Plan (BCP) (which includes utilities failures) to support your own BCPs in such an event.
- Reviewing our Major Incident Management (MIM) process to ensure this sufficiently covers escalation of loss of power to senior teams
Furthermore, where NHS Property Services supplies customers’ energy, we have registered eligible properties with the Gas Priority Register and we are working with Electricity Network Operators and NHS England to register eligible properties as protected sites for electricity too. However, please be aware that if you procure your own energy or it's supplied to you via a superior landlord, this registration process won't have been carried out by us and we recommend you get in touch with your energy supplier to discuss.
NHSPS works closely with NHS England to ensure we have the appropriate resources and procedures in place to ensure we can maintain services in the event of a disruption, and we regularly review possibilities to further improve energy resilience.
What do customers need to do?
In the event of a power failure at your site, please call our Customer Service Centre on 0808 196 2045.
Please work with your Facilities Service Manager to enable us to conduct load testing of your generators. This is very important as it will ensure the generator is capable of supporting your site’s activities in the event of a power outage. Your Facilities Servies Manager will be in touch with you if load testing is required.
Please also be aware that you are responsible for having a BCP plan in place in the event that there is a power outage and the backup generators to the property fail.
