In mid-November last year Ryhurst signed what it dubbed ‘a ground-breaking strategic estates partnership’ agreement with the Isle of Wight NHS Trust (HEJ – January 2015). Under the Wight Life Partnership, the two organisations will work in partnership ‘to comprehensively review the estate across all the Trust’s sites to ensure that buildings and grounds are being fully utilised, and suitable for modern healthcare’. This is Ryhurst’s third such ‘whole estate’ joint-venture agreement with the NHS, and the first with a non-Foundation Trust, harnessing an approach that sees the company shoulder a considerable part of the burden of making optimum use of, and deriving ‘maximum value’ from, large healthcare estates. HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, reports.
Part of the Rydon Group, a construction, development, maintenance, and management group operating throughout England, Ryhurst has for nearly 20 years operated as a standalone business providing land and asset solutions for the health and social care markets – ‘evolving’ from delivering new facilities to the NHS via PFI, to ‘providing a full breadth of property management and development services’ through a ‘unique, whole estate’ Joint Venture Partnership model. It is via this model that the recently announced partnership with the Isle of Wight NHS Trust, and Ryhurst’s two similar agreements, signed with the Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust, and the Cheshire & Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (CWP), in August 2010 and November 2013 respectively, have progressed.
‘Especially noteworthy’
Last November’s Isle of Wight jointventure agreement was noteworthy given that the Trust is England’s only ‘fully integrated’ NHS care provider; it brings together ambulance, community, hospital, and mental health services for residents across the Island. Ryhurst MD, Stephen Collinson, officially signed the ‘partnership’ with the Trust’s chief executive, Karen Baker, on 13 November. When I met with him at Ryhurst’s East Sussex headquarters a fortnight later, the ink was barely dry, and he was thus not in a position to go into much detail about the ‘JV’. However, among its plans, the Trust had already, he explained, identified a number of existing facilities for potential conversion into step-down facilities, and was looking into potentially establishing private patient facilities at its main acute hospital in Newport.
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