COVID-19 FAQ

Please contact us via our FM helpdesk on 0808 196 2045 for the following:

• to report an emergency or urgent FM issue 
• to notify us of positive cases of COVID-19 at one of our buildings. We ask that you inform our reception colleagues of any procedures you have introduced to deal with patients who attend with symptoms of COVID-19.
• to notify us of any segregation/cohort areas of in-patient treatment established in one of our buildings, so we can effectively plan resources to support this.
• if you require assistance with repurposing space to better support clinical needs 

NHSPS has developed a Pandemic Preparedness Procedure which outlines how we will effectively manage a pandemic situation whilst ensuring key services are still provided through our Major Incident Management (MIM) and Business Continuity (BC) procedures, processes and assessments.

You can view our Pandemic Preparedness Procedure here.

If you are a customer of NHS Property Services and have not received our updates through email or post, please contact our Customer Support Centre to register for the updates.

We are working with and following the guidance issued by Public Health England and NHS England​. Our facilities services teams have received general health and safety and personal hygiene guidance, including good handwashing routines and cleaning regimes. Our teams are suitably prepared to provide support to customers (such as through cleaning and decontamination services) if you are monitoring a patient with a suspected case of COVID-19 in one of our facilities. 

To reduce the risk of spreading the virus on your site, please follow NHS England’s guidance on infection control and prevention and refer to Public Health England’s guidance.

We're continuing to provide our customers with key services to help them manage the ongoing epidemic. These include:

Repurposing space to support clinical needs

At this unprecedented time, we are dedicated to supporting STP/ICSs and NHS England and Improvement teams, with property options to provide urgent additional capacity and different space requirements. 

Our specialist strategic asset management teams are helping to repurpose space, recommission vacant space and reconfigure sites.From early March onwards, we have identified opportunities to create additional bed capacity to support the response to the coronavirus. At present, we are working across 60 sites to create approximately 1,400 beds, and liaising closely with STPs, ICSs, commissioners and providers to best match this additional capacity to local demand.

The first 14 sites have already been made ready for occupation, with seven of these sites now operational with over 280 beds available for providers for additional local capacity and flexibility, including step down care.

Our estate is also being adapted to provide additional primary care capacity, or to provide flexibility of how GP services are provided to treat both COVID19 and non-COVID19 patients. We are pleased to be supporting commissioners and providers to rapidly find solutions to a high volume of individual space enquiries, and over 100 of these have already been handed over, with our Facilities Management services adapted to meet the changing operational requirements.

Our teams are able to assist you with planning and delivery of solutions which require changes to all or part of a site and can work with you in the early stages to identify any additional estate or facilities management requirements. This will allow us to consider impacts on other occupiers of buildings; plan for additional cleaning requirements; impacts of changes to operating hours (such as extended working, weekends and the upcoming bank holiday) and any required FM resourcing.

Where possible, it would be helpful if these change requirements are co-ordinated through your commissioning teams to ensure we can provide the most appropriate support.

Many of you will already be in discussion with your local teams at NHSPS and we encourage those who haven’t to contact your regional team or get in touch via our Customer Support Centre on 0800 085 3015 or customer.service@property.nhs.uk who will be happy to assist.

Cleaning

There is significant demand for our specialist clinical cleaning capability at present. Where we provide cleaning services to you, our facilities management teams will be able to identify the appropriate level of cleaning required aligned to the Public Health England guidance.

We are in the process of training more of our cleaning teams to be able to support the cleaning of in-patient areas where patient(s) have suspected or confirmed COVID-19 and can offer this support to customers where training has been completed. Please speak to your local contact or our helpdesk to notify them where you have set up designated segregation and cohorting areas for suspected or confirmed COVID-19 patients so that our teams can ensure cleaning regimes are re-aligned to meet requirements where possible. 

We may need to rely on clinical teams to provide appropriate PPE including FFP3 masks, if NHSPS is unable to procure sufficient quantities to protect our teams; we will let you know if this is the case. Please call our FM Helpdesk on 0808 196 2045 to request these services.  

Waste disposal

Public Health England guidance advises that all waste generated from suspected or confirmed cases of COVID-19 should be treated as clinical waste. We manage and dispose of waste in accordance with HTM07-01 guidelines. 

During this period, we recognise the priority for the NHS is on patient care and supporting clinical needs. As the challenges posed by COVID-19 increase over the coming weeks and months, continuing to provide frontline colleagues is our priority but to do that we are reliant on being able to pay suppliers to support us in this challenge.

We know this is a difficult time for us all and the government has provided funding payments into the system to help. Therefore, to allow us to continue to support the suppliers, we ask that payments are processed as normal wherever possible and paid by bank transfer.

Given the circumstances, we will not be actively escalating debt recovery during this period apart from in exceptional cases. If you have specific concerns, please contact us to discuss via our Customer Support Centre on 0800 085 3015 or customer.service@property.nhs.uk.

Construction and refurbishment sites are likely to stop works to safeguard customers, colleagues and patients. Some sites may continue, especially where there will be extra clinical capacity created. We are reviewing on a project by project basis in full liaison with customers to arrive at a mutually agreed decision

In line with government policy, our car parks will be free to use for NHS staff.

‘Hot’ sites are facilities to assess and treat possible Covid-19 patients, whereas 'cold’ sites are facilities to assess and treat those who don't have any symptoms of the virus, nor do any members of their household. These could be separate facilities within the same site.