Published date: 30 October 2024
ICB Voices Q&A: Working with Humber and North Yorkshire ICB to adapt their estate
We spoke to Stephanie Porter, Assistant Director for Estates, Infrastructure and Sustainability at Humber and North Yorkshire ICB to learn more about the challenges they’re facing and how we can work together to continue improving their estate.
Can you tell us a bit more about the estates challenges Humber and North Yorkshire are facing?
Absolutely. To give you some background, we serve a population of 1.8 million and have been in financial loss on and off for about 10 years. I’m sure many ICBs can relate to this, there’s simply not enough money in the system to keep up with the ongoing demand for more healthcare facilities as populations grow, demand changes and infrastructure ages.
Across our estate, there’s significant health deprivation that we need to address. For example, an average male in Hull has a 12-year shorter life expectancy compared to York. One of our main goals is to narrow the gap in healthy life expectancy by 2030 and see it increase by 5 years by 2035.
We’re also seeing fast population growth; in raw numbers, the population of our estate is expected to rise by 20% in the next ten years. This means that we must be prepared to meet the increasing demand for health and social care that’ll come with a growing and ageing population. And ensure we use all the crown estate and digital innovations to support these changes.
How have you been working with NHSPS to meet the needs of the local community?
Over the years, I’ve developed strong relationships with individual NHSPS members. We’ve worked together despite various changes within the NHS. The trust we’ve built along the way has been key to achieving our goals.
A couple of success stories include
- Refurbishment of Whitby Hospital – This was an ageing hospital that needed to be redeveloped to remain fit for purpose and continue meeting the healthcare needs of the local population. NHSPS completed a full refurbishment of Whitby Hospitals’ 4-story tower block and transformed it into a modern, state of the art facility that’s been operational for about 2 years now. As a result of the redevelopment, the hospital houses many services including community care, diagnostics like x-rays.
- Closure of Westbourne Health Centre – This was an underused community asset where over half the property had been empty for about seven years. With support from NHSPS’ property disposal and reinvestment service, we were finally able to close this surplus site. This was not an easy task, but NHSPS diplomatically managed the pressure from the local community and councillors and supported the numerous trusts running services from the site to move with no impact. This relocation freed up funds to be reinvested into the NHS to improve patient care where needed.
- Leveraging funding through developer contributions – I worked with Karina Dare, Primary Care Estates Strategy Lead at NHSPS, to set up a task-and-finish group with the aim of identifying new means of unlocking funding to support our healthcare plans. We took the local development plan and mapped every single strategic site development to understand where there’s a need for better healthcare and opportunity for funding. As a result, we identified some new developments where we could expect £18.5 million in funding through developer contributions. The team also supported our ICB by creating a template response letter and helping us with planning applications to request funding.
These are just some examples of the top of my head, I’ll be talking more about my partnership with NHSPS at the NHS Property Conference, in London on 6 November, where I’ll be co-presenting with the team.
How can we continue working with you to help you further?
One of the areas we’re keen to have your support is around our sustainability agenda. My NHS England contact, Neil Cartwright is always singing your praises for the work you’re doing on demonstrating transition to net zero.
As this is part of the NHS long-term plan and our infrastructure strategy, we would benefit from having more guidance on this to help us remain on track.
Another area where your expertise would be key is for looking after our lease portfolio. Previously, we’ve left the practices to deal with leases themselves, but coming from a healthcare background, I’ve noticed that we often lack the property expertise to negotiate leases successfully.
For example, I had to step in as final approver where a GP in York was about to sign a 10-year lease where they’d take on the lifecycle costs of the lifts, boiler, and windows. GPs think from a healthcare lens, but when it comes to making property decisions, we need to be guided with property expertise to help us negotiate more favourable lease terms.
As mentioned before, there are other areas where you’re already supporting us like strategic estate planning and capital project management which we’re continuing to work together on.
