INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT
Going back to the future with PPP
Public-private partnerships are once again being touted as a means of bringing about much-needed investment in health infrastructure, particularly when it comes to serving local health needs. Here, Sarah Beaumont-Smith, UK strategy director of Fulcrum Infrastructure Group and chair of both the Neighbourhood Health Forum and The LIFT Council, discusses the past, present and future of neighbourhood health delivery.
After many years of uncertainty, a clearer roadmap for the future of the NHS is taking shape, with the government’s neighbourhood health plans starting to galvanise many of us across the sector – from investors and developers to contractors and service providers.
In particular, the government’s decision to
re-open the door once again to public-private partnerships (PPP) in health infrastructure delivery represents a vital step change, and is something that the investment community has been calling for over many years. Without doubt, it is crucial that the NHS remains a ‘free at the point of use’ service, based on patients’ needs and not their ability to pay. Nonetheless, there is also widespread recognition that the private sector has a crucial role to play, not least to help address the capital shortfall in the NHS which stands at a staggering £37bn according to the 2024 Darzi report. Using PPP to attract private investment into the NHS is
the best way to ensure that the health service continues to have the right facilities, in the right places, to serve local health needs. And this is about far more than just money – the private sector can also bring vital skills experience and expertise to support NHS ambitions to build the high- tech, modern, digital healthcare infrastructure needed to underpin a shift towards neighbourhood health With more details expected to emerge over the coming months, neighbourhood health plans have captured huge private sector interest, and I was pleased to help launch the Neighbourhood Health Forum earlier this year as a collective new voice in neighbourhood health delivery. The Forum brings together nine private investors with an unrivalled track record in neighbourhood health delivery, with our members, having delivered £10bn of health infrastructure across 1,400 community facilities over the last 20 years. For such a large group of like-minded investors to come together, we can clearly see the huge appetite of the private sector to help shape, finance, and deliver this critical next chapter for the NHS. It also shows the broad industry consensus that the public and private sectors working together is the right approach. As the government finalises its new health PPP delivery model over the coming months, the Neighbourhood Health Forum stands ready to play its part, using our unrivalled experience to help shape the right partnership models and the right investment
approach that will deliver for the NHS, patients, and local communities.
But as we look to the future of healthcare and some of
the significant opportunities ahead, there are also often valuable lessons to be learned from the past – a case of ‘back to the future’ if you like.
A much-needed LIFT This year also marks the 25th anniversary of the NHS Local Improvement Finance Trust (NHS LIFT) programme – a PPP model that was designed to bring together the NHS, Department of Health, and private sector organisations to jointly deliver much-needed new primary care infrastructure in the heart of the community. Since it was set up in 2001, LIFT has demonstrated the huge strength of a PPP approach to deliver health
August 2026 Health Estate Journal 51
Jean Bishop Integrated Care Centre, Hull.
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