As part of our role helping the NHS to deliver on its Long Term Plan, we are committed to creating healthy places for patients, colleagues, communities and the environment to thrive through our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy.

Our CSR strategy commits to act responsibly and operate sustainably across everything that we do. Since we launched our strategy in 2018, we have been developing programmes to tackle five key issues: supporting social prescribing, reducing carbon emissions, managing waste, improving accessibility, and tackling isolation and loneliness.

Creating spaces for social prescribing

Social prescribing is a way that GPs, nurses and other primary care professionals can refer patients to local, non-clinical services often provided by the voluntary and community sector to address the root cause of their health problems and improve wellbeing. We are in prime position to help the NHS get the most from its estate and so are transforming vacant indoor and outdoor spaces across our portfolio into social prescribing hubs for community groups to use to help these patients. We currently have six sites and are developing many more. To find out more about our social prescribing offering, visit our webpage.

Striving to achieve the NHS net zero carbon goal

With the NHS being responsible for around 4% of the UK’s carbon footprint and as owners of 10% of the NHS estate, we have a responsibility to reduce the negative environmental impact of our buildings, working with our building occupiers and our people to do so. As of April 2020, all our properties are powered by 100% renewable electricity (offsetting over 37,000 tonnes of CO2 each year) and in 2019/20, we saved 46,000 tonnes of CO2 through colleague-led initiatives and 830 tonnes of CO2 via LED replacements. Read more about our pledge to reduce carbon emissions.

Reducing waste produced in our NHS buildings

As part of our waste reduction efforts, we are developing our waste management systems, including standardising procedures and processes and ensuring legal compliance. We are increasing recycling across our sites and have introduced a better range of bins for correct waste segregation. As a result of these initiatives, 95% of our general waste now gets diverted from landfill for recycling or heat recovery. Find out more by reading our waste reduction pledge.

Improving accessibility across our NHS buildings

We have been working with AccessAble since 2017 to produce accessibility guides for 324 of our properties so that patients can feel prepared and confident about getting to and around our NHS buildings. We are investing in making changes to our properties to make them more accessible. Find out more about our partnership with AccessAble and find guides on the property search page of our website.

Tackling isolation and loneliness through volunteering and fundraising

Loneliness has been linked to several physical and mental health conditions such as coronary heart disease, anxiety and depression, making it a contributing factor to rising numbers of patients requiring NHS clinical care. To help tackle the problem, we’ve partnered with the Carers Trust, raising £56,000 for older unpaid carers in the UK who are often most at risk of becoming isolated (correct as of April 2020). Find out about how we’ve done this in our CSR report.

Sustainable procurement of goods and services

In order to encourage the sustainable procurement of goods and services in all premises and across the organisation, NHS Property Services works in partnership with our suppliers, stakeholders and communities to consider the social, economic, environmental and ethical impact of our procurement techniques and processes.

Sustainability criteria is applied alongside value for money considerations in central purchasing. A selection of our sustainability principles include:

• Expectation that sustainable development principles (whole life costing) are embedded in core business
• Contract assessment criteria on sustainable development principles
• Utilisation of ‘Government’s Quick Wins’ to improve sustainable procurement for NHS Property Services
• Driving efficiencies through our bulk purchasing power and the Government Procurement Service
• Reusing, refurbishing and recycling