DH’s future estates ‘agenda’ set out

HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, met with Peter Sellars, the Division’s new head of profession within the DH, to talk through the agenda, and discuss how the Division will work with, and support, estates professionals going forward to ensure that patients continue to receive care in high quality, clean, safe, fit-for-purpose buildings. The Division’s new ‘position’ within the Department follows an 18-month consultation which identified what stakeholders including healthcare estates and facilities professionals, Institutes and trade associations, and Royal Colleges, felt were the sector’s most pressing issues over the next 5-10 years.

Discussing the new ‘agenda’ with me at the Department of Health’s Wellington House offices near London’s Waterloo Station, Peter Sellars explained that the Department’s estates and facilities agenda sits within the portfolio of Minister of State for Health, Simon Burns, who he described as ‘highly supportive and very proactive in recognising the challenges going forward’. Despite, however, himself believing it was ‘a particularly interesting and exciting time’ for estates professionals, Peter Sellars acknowledged that continuing to provide a high quality patient environment with less money available to maintain and upgrade buildings and other ‘assets’, at a time when patient, Government, and regulatory expectations on overall care quality had never been higher, would be a challenge for the entire healthcare estates and facilities community. Adding to the pressures would be an ageing demographic, and thus the likelihood of growing demand for many types of care. Nevertheless, it was a challenge he believed was achievable.

An achievable challenge