IHEEM WALES REGIONAL CONFERENCE 2025 KEYNOTE
Prioritising where limited capital funds are spent
Giving the opening keynote speech remotely at the 2025 IHEEM Wales Regional Conference at the ICC Wales in May, Judith Paget CBE, Director General for Health and Social Services and NHS Wales Chief Executive, reflected on some of the key challenges for the NHS estate in Wales – including an ageing estate, a significant maintenance backlog, and the need to prioritise where limited capital funding is invested. With avoidable safety incidents still occurring across the NHS, it was also vital – she said – that compliance risks were managed and mitigated against.
Speaking in a pre- recorded presentation, Judith Paget, Director General for Health and Social Services and NHS Wales Chief Executive, reflected on some of the key challenges for the NHS estate in Wales.
The first morning’s opening conference session, at an event themed ‘Pioneering estates for tomorrow’, was prefaced with an introduction from IHEEM’s CEO, Pete Sellars, who highlighted the ‘great line-up of speakers’, and told delegates that what made such events special was their engagement with those presenting. He explained that the first session’s keynote speaker would be Judith Paget, followed by colleague, Stuart Douglas, Director of NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership – Specialist Estates Services (see HEJ – June 2025). With Judith Paget not able to attend in person, Pete Sellars told delegates her presentation would be one recorded in advance. Following her conference address and the next, from Stuart Douglas, the pair were joined on stage for a lively Q&A session by Simon Russell, Deputy Director of NHS Wales SSP SES, and Mark Gapper, the organisation’s Head of Engineering.
A valued profession praised Judith Paget began her address by thanking IHEEM and its Wales Branch for inviting her to speak. While sorry not to be able to attend, she said she was ‘really grateful to have the opportunity to record this message to show how much value we place on the healthcare engineering and estate management role across our NHS in Wales’. She said: “I recognise that there are significant challenges across the NHS, which often reflect the age and condition of many parts of our estate. The engineering and estate management functions are key to ensuring healthcare services across hospitals and other healthcare facilities can operate efficiently and effectively and maintain business continuity.” She added that she very much appreciates ‘the commitment of all colleagues who are working tirelessly to deliver clinical services compliantly and safely’.
54 Health Estate Journal August 2025 “Today,” she explained, “I’d like to briefly outline some
of the challenges for the NHS in Wales, and highlight some of the ways in which the estate can help respond to these. The pressures on our services remain, and we are dealing with these alongside a very difficult and pressing financial position.” Against this backdrop, she said it was the healthcare EFM and healthcare engineering community’s ‘collective responsibility’ to make sure it continued to rise to these challenges, and ensure that NHS Wales services ‘remain safe and accessible to those that need them the most’. It was also key, she added, to ensure that all of the
staff across the NHS in Wales feel supported and valued with the work that they do. She told the conference: “A Healthier Wales set up a vision for an integrated system with seamless services that focus on prevention and community-based care, and going into hospital only when absolutely needed.” This remained the aim where possible. Judith Paget said: “I want to continue to move healthcare services that do not need to be provided at all main hospital sites into the community, but recognise that this will take time and ongoing resources.” She continued: “Quality and safety are an integral part of everything we do. Serious, avoidable safety incidents are still occurring across the NHS, so it’s important that compliance risks are managed and mitigated against.”
Identifying the key risks Given the increase in the backlog maintenance figure across NHS organisations, it was – she said – essential that the key risks to patient safety and business continuity were identified, and she was encouraged that work to better understand NHS Wales’s key risks was beginning to progress. She said: “Against this backdrop, I’d like to highlight a few of the key areas which relate to engineering and estate management. Over the next two financial years, NHS Wales will benefit from £80 m in funds, with investment in a range of areas – including infrastructure, fire safety, mental health, decontamination, and infection prevention and control.” She had been pleased to receive reports of a wide take-up of this offer, and thereby a commitment from healthcare organisations to join NHS Wales’s management in directing funds in this way. Out of 337 bids received against all the categories, the Cabinet Secretary had been able to approve 278 of the bids. Over time, she was hopeful that this programme, building on the previous targeted estates backlog funding provided in 2024-2025, would make a meaningful reduction in the £135 bn worth of backlog maintenance figure, and
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