Published date: 29 August 2024
Spotlight on...Relationship Partners
Our relationship partners play an important role in maintaining strong, collaborative partnerships with Integrated Care Boards (ICBs). They work closely with ICBs to find solutions to their estates' challenges and remove the blockers so we can achieve our shared goals.
Meet Daniel Burdett
Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your role at NHSPS?
I’m a Relationship Partner in the Customer team at NHS Property services. I’m a qualified General Practice Chartered Surveyor with over 15 years of experience working within the NHS. Over the years, I’ve gained a really good understanding of how the NHS system works and the challenges ICBs face with their estate.
I’m the primary point of contact for six ICB customers across the North region. My role involves daily engagement with senior colleagues within ICBs, NHS England, Community Health Partnerships (CHP), and internal within NHSPS.
What I love most about my job is seeing the results of our partnership. It’s really rewarding to be part of projects where I can bring different NHSPS teams with the right skillset together to support ICBs in delivering the best value for the NHS. It feels great knowing that our teamwork helps improve patient care and health in the community.
What are some of the biggest challenges ICBs are facing at the moment and how can you help?
One common challenge I’ve noticed across different ICBs is the need to do more with less. With funding often limited, ICBs face tough decisions on how to stretch their budgets to improve local health outcomes as much as possible.
As their primary contact, I work with the cross functional NHSPS teams to address their concerns and support them where possible. Often, ICBs’ property expertise is spread very thin, so they have limited resources to adapt the estate to meet changing patient needs and that’s where we can step in to support.
Having teams with expertise in town planning, surveying, construction, facilities management (FM) delivery and compliance to name a few means we have the resources to support ICBs every step of the way. Whether that’s gathering data to form an estate strategy, looking to improve utilisation, redeveloping existing healthcare buildings or unlocking funding from releasing surplus sites.
Can you share an example where you’ve helped make a real difference to your ICB partners?
I feel I've made a real difference by helping to support customer projects through our Healthy Places programme. This programme, led by our strategy team, focuses on creating healthier buildings in areas of high deprivation to improve patient care.
Last year, we transformed 4,300 sqm of vacant space across the North region to improve healthcare for 330k patients and I’m really proud to have played a role in that.
To give you an example, I’ve been heavily involved in a project to deliver a new facility for Primary Care and Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS) in Manchester. The new facility is set to increase accessible healthcare for the growing population in the area.
For this project, I’ve brought different teams from NHSPS to work together from start to finish to provide an end-to-end property solution. We found the right space for this facility, one that meets the criteria of being accessible for patients and is also great value for money for the NHS.
So you’re the go-to person for the ICBs you look after to reach out to if they need some help with their estate?
Absolutely, we recently helped two ICBs in the North develop their estates and infrastructure strategies. These are long term plans that shape how we manage healthcare facilities in a region to improve health outcomes.
While our strategy team led the project, I supported the team with engagement ensuring all parts of the NHS came together to support and be part of the strategy document.
This project really expanded our engagement with our ICB customers. Many different teams came together to co-create the infrastructure strategy which will hopefully make a big difference to population health in the area.
It’s great to see the positive impact that we can have in shaping these strategies, which has resulted in great feedback from ICB leaders.
As a result of this work, we’ve formed new relationships across the ICBs, so more people know they can reach out to us for any support.
Which is great, as that’s exactly what we’re here for.
What’s the one thing you would you like ICBs to know about NHSPS?
I would like ICBs to know we are part of the NHS and have a broad range of services we can offer.
Having worked in other parts of the NHS and wider public sector, I’ve sat on the provider side and know how important it is for providers to understand the system and be able to work within it.
So, I want ICBs to understand that we don’t just have the right expertise to support them, our teams also have great knowledge of the NHS.
We have Relationship Partners aligned to all 42 ICSs so if you’re unsure of who to contact, please get in touch with our Customer Service Centre.
