IHEEM WALES REGIONAL CONFERENCE 2025 KEYNOTE


improve the quality of the NHS estate in Wales. Here she reiterated the need to focus on the key estate risks and direct NHS Wales’s limited funds towards issues that affected patient or staff safety and business continuity. Future business cases for capital funding would, Judith


Paget explained, need to clearly demonstrate how schemes will reduce the backlog maintenance figures for the individual Health Board or Trust. She said: “Having had to divert significant funds at short notice in 2024/2025 to deal with the emergency roof failure at the Princess of Wales Hospital in Bridgend was very disappointing. I’m sure you’ll all agree it would be far better for patients, and much better value for money, for such activities to be planned as part of a normal lifecycle replacement, than to have to be reactive with significant disruption in cost.” Understanding the estate’s condition was, she said, essential to avoid these situations arising, while recognising that ‘you can’t always plan for everything’, with the issues with Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete ‘a great example’ of that.


Space utilisation and rationalisation She said: “Looking ahead, I would encourage you to ensure that not only are you on top of your estate surveys, but also that you are very clear on the risk status, to help focus your Board’s attention, and ensure that investment priorities can be targeted at the most important engineering and infrastructure items.” One clear area which she said her Welsh Government Finance Team had been promoting was space utilisation and rationalisation. Judith Paget said: “I would encourage you to ensure that cases for investment are built on solid foundations of demand and capacity assessments, to support projected spatial requirements. In all cases, existing estate rationalisation opportunities should be explored at the same time, to enable our limited funds to be focused on good and affordable stock. Ultimately, we want to optimise the NHS Wales footprint to ensure we are able to provide high quality care when needed for our patients.” This, she stressed, involved providing services ‘at the right place, at the right size facility, at the right time, and to modern and safe staff and patient standards’. Judith Paget said she was keen to ensure that NHS


Wales looks to reduce its emissions ‘as far as possible’ to contribute to the Welsh Ministers’ ambitions for the country’s public sector to be Net Zero by 2030. She said: “The challenges of having an ageing estate are clearly understood. We aren’t likely to be able to move to Net Zero in the short term, but we can work on what is deliverable, and ensure that new developments and major refurbishments take account of the newly released guidance on the Net Zero building standards.”


Building emissions falling The NHS Wales Chief Executive said she was pleased to be able to report that building emissions had fallen by 5% since 2022, and 9% since 2018, despite potentially lower activity before the pandemic and – for NHS Wales – the Grange University Hospital being opened during a period with no buildings being closed directly related to it opening. Judith Paget said: “It is good work that the Welsh Government energy service is progressing with all Health Boards. The solar farm at Morriston Hospital has been a major success, and we are keen to promote other renewable energy schemes. The targeted estate funding has meant that we are starting to show the significant benefits of this investment to address decarbonisation.” She continued: “These actions not only reduce the amount of energy required, but improving the building fabric, while contributing to improve energy efficiency, also helps to


improve the patient and staff experience.” Looking forward, the speaker said she was ‘conscious


that the future capital programme has been under pressure as funds are constrained’. “Nevertheless,” she told delegates, “we do have some exciting schemes planned. While I recognise that it was an onerous task for NHS organisations, and indeed Welsh Government of officials, the capital schemes identified by NHS organisations through the prioritisation exercise have helped us focus minds.” As a result, Health Boards and NHS Trusts had been given a clear message as to which capital schemes they should focus on in the short to medium term. “There are already some examples of good partnership working,” Judith Paget explained, “while I’m keen to encourage more; for Health Boards this will mean regional facilities for certain clinical services, with the necessary commitment from all partners. We cannot continue to have specialist clinical services provided at separate sites in relatively close proximity.” As well as being a workforce risk, this was also ‘an inefficient use of limited resources’.


New cancer treatment centre discussed Judith Paget said she was delighted to see that delegates at the event would be receiving an update on the new cancer center being developed in south-east Wales – the new Velindre Cancer Centre in Cardiff (the subject of a separate presentation the same morning), describing the new facility as ‘a major investment which will ensure that cancer patients in south-east Wales have access to first-class facilities for their treatment.’ She added: “We’re also looking regionally at opportunities to centralise some diagnostic and treatment activity, to help tackle the waiting list backlog, and position us well to respond to higher activity volumes for the future. The aim is to locate these dedicated centres on green sites, which means they would not be affected by emergency or urgent care pressures. A good example of this is the regional orthopaedic hub at Llandudno Hospital in North Wales (which is currently under construction). She added: “As we move forward, we’ll see more people being treated at home or in the community, and an increased use of digital solutions and AI in our healthcare system in Wales. To conclude, engineering and estate management are key enablers to allow NHS Wales to provide safe and efficient healthcare services from compliant facilities to the Welsh population. Thank you for listening. I hope you have a successful conference yet again. Thank you for everything you do.” This concluded her conference presentation, and having


thanked her for speaking, session Chair, Pete Sellars, then introduced Stuart Douglas to the stage for his presentation, explaining that he would be ‘sharing his thoughts around the challenges his Chief Executive has just highlighted’.


August 2025 Health Estate Journal 55


ICC Wales near Newport was the venue for the IHEEM Wales Regional Conference, held in early May this year.


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