Revised Model needs high level buy-in

Having, in the March 2013 HEJ, described some of the key features and benefits of the latest Model, here, in the first half of a two-part article, we report on the morning session of the first in a series of IHEEM and DH-organised roundtable discussion events planned for coming months to help promote the Model, explain its benefits, and encourage wider, NHS take-up. The next HEJ (August 2013) will cover the afternoon’s debate.

Held at the Manchester Hilton Hotel, the first in a series of events staged jointly by IHEEM and the Department of Health, with the support of Finegreen Associates, to publicise and promote the revised and updated NHS Premises Assurance Model (NHS PAM), took the form of a panel discussion and debate. On the expert panel were chair, Julian Amey, the Institute’s CEO; Peter Sellars, head of profession at the Department of Health’s NHS Estates and Facilities Policy Division, and his colleague, Mike Bellas, senior estates analysis manager within the Division; Miles Timperley, director of Estates at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust; Lisa Geary, a Partner at law firm, Capsticks; Paul Mills, a Partner at built asset consultancy EC Harris, and Bill Murray, an IHEEM Past President, who spent many years in senior estates and facilities roles, and as a Trust CEO, in the NHS, before retiring from the service in November 2003 (his last full-time role was as Chief Executive of South Tees Hospitals NHS Trust). Before the wider debate started, Peter Sellars explained how the first NHS Premises Assurance Model came about; it was first developed following the investigation into the causes of a major outbreak of Clostridium difficile at hospitals in Kent operated by the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust that occurred in 2005 and 2006. The subsequent inquiry suggested that a number of failings linked to the buildings and facilities used by the Trust contributed. Peter Sellars said: “Rob Smith, then head of the DH’s NHS Estates and Facilities Policy Division, and I, were invited to meet David Flory, the NHS’s Deputy CEO, who asked what our Division already had in place as regards assurance on NHS buildings and estates functions. We reported that we had nothing, and indeed in my own 26 years in the NHS, we had never had any such system. I explained that the estates and facilities functions of NHS Trusts had not been seen as an integral part of delivering good quality healthcare. David Flory asked us to develop a sensible tool that would help and support NHS Trusts in demonstrating assurance and corporate governance with respect to buildings and assets.”

Engagement with NHS Trust