NHSE/NHSI ESTATES FORUM
Minister stresses importance of ‘building back better’
Giving one of the morning keynote presentations at an ‘NHSE/NHSI Estates & Facilities Forum’ webinar in mid-March, Minister of State for Health, Edward Argar, gave attendees at the event – held in conjunction with IHEEM – a ‘Health Infrastructure Plan Refresh’. The Minister, who has direct responsibility for England’s healthcare estate, also emphasised the Department of Health & Social Care and the wider Government’s commitment to ensuring that the NHS estate continues to benefit from sufficient funding and focus to enable clinicians to deliver high quality, efficient care over the next decade and beyond.
The webinar session in which Edward Argar spoke was introduced and chaired by Simon Corben, the Director and Head of Profession for Estates and Facilities at NHSE/NHSI, who had himself spoken earlier in the day on the ‘eight core objectives’ on which he and his team have been focusing (see pages 29-32), and which they will continue to prioritise as the UK begins to emerge from the pandemic. The Minister began by thanking Simon Corben for the introduction, and expressing his gratitude to all those within NHSE/NHSE and IHEEM who had been involved in organising the day. Describing the webinar as ‘a hugely important event’, he said he was delighted to be speaking as the Minister with direct responsibility for both the NHS estate, and the associated work that all those working in NHS EFM roles undertook. He said: “In normal times, I would have given multiple speeches like
this in my 18 months in post, but the challenges of organising events such as this during the pandemic, and the pressure of work in our diaries that we have all faced over the past year, have seen me politely decline many of the invitations extended to me. However, today’s event is different; as soon as Simon and his team invited me, I had no hesitation in saying ‘yes’. That is because of just how central and vital the work of the professions and people represented today has been to our pandemic response, and how important your work is to our NHS everyday. I understand,” he continued, “that attendees today cover the whole breadth of those working in and around, and supporting, our estate – from representatives from NHS England and NHS Improvement, to Estates Directors, Finance Directors, and others working in the Estates and Facilities space.”
‘A great privilege’
The Minister was introduced to attendees by session chair, Simon Corben, Director and Head of Profession for Estates and Facilities at NHSE/NHSI.
Dubbing it ‘a great privilege’ to be able to speak to such an audience, the Minister also thanked all the senior estates and facilities professionals who were attending the webinar, and expressed his appreciation to ‘every one of the 100,000 people in the NHS Estates and Facilities workforce’ who they collectively represented. He recalled the ‘very powerful quote’ – which he said attendees might have heard Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, citing – attributed to John F Kennedy on visiting NASA for the first time. During his tour of the facility, the US President had met a janitor carrying a broom down a hallway, and enquired what he did for NASA. He reportedly replied: ‘I’m helping put a man on the moon.’ The Minister believed that this approach, and the sentiments behind it, applied as much to every member of the ‘amazing NHS workforce’, as they had to the janitor at the US space agency He said: “Whether you are a consultant, a cleaner, an emergency department nurse, or an Estates Manager, or work in any of the other NHS roles in between, you are all absolutely vital to the service being able to do what it does, day in, day out – which is to save lives, and help patients recover from illness. Indeed,” the Minister continued, “I often hear those who work in the professions represented today described as ‘the hidden heroes’ of our NHS, and I believe that this heroism has never been greater.” His role, the speaker emphasised, was to work with FM professionals, and with Simon Corben and his team, ‘to do what we can to make sure that that role isn’t quite so hidden’. The entire profession had, Edward Argar said, ‘worked tirelessly during these extremely challenging months’, with EFM teams ‘playing a pivotal role in so many of the NHS’s great achievements during the pandemic’ – for example, the shift to telemedicine, which had kept so many vital services going; the building of the
May 2021 Health Estate Journal 37
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