Advertisement feature The £15.9bn Question
Why the NHS Backlog Needs a Single Source of Truth, Not Just More Funding
The NHS maintenance backlog now stands at £15.9bn, up 15.7% on the previous year. It is usually cited as proof that estates budgets are not keeping pace, and that is true. But the headline figure conceals something more useful underneath it.
The backlog is not one number. Under the ERIC return, it is split into risk categories, from high through to low, and the high-risk portion alone now exceeds £3.5bn. That distinction matters more than the total, because two Trusts can report identical figures while carrying very different levels of actual risk. A leaking roof over a storeroom and a failing electrical system in a theatre count towards the same total, yet they are not the same problem.
Ask estates leaders what is driving the backlog, and ageing infrastructure comes out ahead of everything else, cited by around 63%, ahead of funding constraints at 53%. Even with more capital tomorrow, many Trusts would still be constrained by not knowing how risky each part of their estate is.
That is the second problem. The data behind most prioritisation decisions is not as solid as it needs to be. Roughly one in ten FM professionals say their asset register is fully accurate, and close to a third still run theirs from spreadsheets. If the register is unreliable, so is everything built on it.
Managing the backlog means managing the data first A Trust that can say, with confidence, “this is what’s high risk, and here is the evidence,” is in a fundamentally different position to one working from a register not reviewed in eighteen months. It is about standing behind a prioritisation decision at Board level and answering the follow-up question in that same meeting.
This is where a single source of truth platform earns its place. At INVIDA, we model condition, age and risk against one underlying asset register, captured in the field via mobile survey rather than old paperwork. The numbers behind an ERIC return and a capital bid become the same numbers, letting a Trust move to a prioritised, evidence-backed plan.
The part that gets overlooked: who owns the data Here is a question worth asking before you need the answer: if your Trust changed maintenance contractor tomorrow, would you retain the full history of your assets — condition surveys, certificates and job records?
For many Trusts, the honest answer is no. That history often lives inside the contractor’s own system, and the same exposure exists one layer up, in the software itself. When a CAFM or IWMS vendor changes ownership, some organisations have found themselves migrating onto a different platform on someone else’s timeline.
None of this needs to be the case. It is a structural decision, and the one we designed INVIDA around from the outset: the Trust owns the data, the workflow and the record. Contractors work inside that environment under their own permissions rather than holding a separate copy of it, so a change in contractor or vendor never costs a Trust its own history.
Managing it on a budget that isn’t growing None of this is much use if it prices Trusts out. Most estates teams are managing the backlog on a budget that is not keeping pace, so the software meant to solve the problem should not add a second, unpredictable cost.
That is why INVIDA is priced as a flat, portfolio-based fee: one fixed cost, unlimited users, no per-transaction charges. A Trust can add its whole team, contractors included, at no extra cost, with no penalty for holding more data as it matures.
This also removes a quieter fear that keeps Trusts on ageing systems longer than they would like: the risk of switching. INVIDA runs as a single-version SaaS platform, so every Trust is on the same release and new features arrive automatically, with no separate upgrade project or invoice. Because onboarding is delivered on a fixed fee, the migration risk sits with Invida, not the Trust.
The £15.9bn figure won’t shrink on its own. But a Trust that owns its data, trusts its risk categories, and isn’t paying more as it grows will be far better placed to bring that number down.
To discuss how INVIDA can help you to better manage your asset data and bring your backlog down, contact their team today.
E:
enquiries@invida.co.uk T: 0333 335 0041 W:
invida.co.uk/healthcare
By Chris Butchart, Vice President of
CAFM & IWMS, Invida
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