HEALTHCARE INFRASTRUCTURE
APPG meeting focused on challenges post-pandemic
Meeting ‘virtually’ on 23 November, members of the recently re-formed All-Party Parliamentary Group for Healthcare Infrastructure discussed how to ensure that the UK’s healthcare infrastructure is fit-for-purpose for the short-to-medium term future, and sufficiently adaptable to cater for changing treatment pathways, clinical and technological advances, and evolving thinking on healthcare estate utilisation. Topics addressed included a lack of UK expertise in the design and planning of new healthcare buildings, rising backlog maintenance, the risks of over-focusing on, and overfunding, the acute sector at the expense of primary care, insufficient future workforce planning, and the significant variance in the quality and availability of healthcare in different parts of the UK. HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, reports.
The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Healthcare Infrastructure (APPG) is a cross-party forum that seeks to highlight ‘the importance of the physical infrastructure of health and social care’, and ‘how high-quality health infrastructure is essential to the delivery of high-quality healthcare to patients’. At the recently re-formed Group’s opening meeting, which was held via Zoom on 23 November, Chair, Conservative MP for Bolton West and Atherton, Chris Green, opened by saying how pleased he was that such a broad spectrum of parliamentarians were taking part. Alongside him as Chair, these included Vice-Chairs, Karin Smith MP, Theresa Villiers MP, and Conservative Life Peer, Lord Naseby, and Officers, Rt Hon Philip Dunne MP, Baroness Jolly, Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP, Nick Fletcher MP, and Peter Dowd MP. Also attending were Baroness Greengross, Baroness Hollins, and Baroness Finlay. Chris Green said the Group represented ‘a good complement of cross-party representatives’, and gave a good indication ‘of the importance and value of health infrastructure to our country’.
Aspiration to be a ‘critical friend’ He hoped the APPG could be ‘a critical friend to the Government’, and help inform policy debate and outcomes. The timing for the Group’s re-formation was ‘not coincidental’ – Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, having in October announced the first multi-year capital funding settlement for the NHS since 2015, and ‘the largest uplift in over a decade’ – taking spending to £11.2 billion by 2024/25. While welcoming this ‘headline’ spending increase, Chris Green said the APPG for Healthcare Infrastructure was keen to ensure that the opportunity was used both to support the NHS as it emerged from the pandemic, and ‘to lay the groundwork for meeting staff and patients’ future needs’. The
The Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Healthcare Infrastructure is the MP for Bolton West and Atherton, Chris Green.
Group’s first session would, he said, be ‘a stock-take and recognition of the condition the NHS estate infrastructure is in right now’.
He said: “The physical and digital infrastructure has played an important role in helping the NHS cope with the pandemic’s demands. However, the last two years have also reflected profound challenges, which we will explore today.” The speakers at the meeting were former Shadow Chancellor, Home Secretary, and Health Secretary, Alan Johnson, today Chair of public-private partnership estates company, Citycare; Nigel Edwards, the CEO of independent health ‘think tank’, the Nuffield Trust, and Siva Anandaciva, Chief Analyst, Policy Team, at The King’s Fund.
A ‘deep dive’
The first to speak, Siva Andanciva, said he would give ‘a broad overview of the current condition of NHS buildings, facilities, and equipment, why these matters to patients, the public, and staff, and what’s being done’. Explaining that the NHS undertakes a survey of its existing buildings and equipment, and assesses their condition, annually, he
showed a slide indicating that, at current estimates, it would cost some £9.3 billion to eradicate the NHS maintenance backlog across England. He added: “The slide shows that, broadly-speaking – particularly over the last few years – the most significant and high-risk issues have been building up more quickly than the lower-risk ones.” Looking at what ‘high- risk’ meant in this context, he explained that the term referred to building and equipment issues that ‘must be addressed with urgent priority to prevent catastrophic failure – major disruptions to clinical services, or deficiencies in safety liable to cause serious injury or prosecution’; it was ‘not about shabby carpets and the need for a lick of paint’.
‘Huge variation’
The data indicated ‘huge variation across the country’. The speaker elaborated: “There is clearly a London issue, with, for example, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, Barts Health NHS Trust, and the Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, accounting for a huge share of the national backlog. However, London doesn’t have a monopoly on tired estate and equipment. Look at a provider organisation like Northumbria Healthcare
Siva Andanciva (left) is Chief Analyst, Policy Team, at The King’s Fund. Right: Nigel Edwards, CEO of the Nuffield Trust.
January 2022 Health Estate Journal 31
©Nuffield Trust
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