DoH reveals plans to abolish NHS Estates

NHS Estates is to be closed, raising questions about the future of its £2.1bn ProCure 21 partnering programme.

A Department of Health (DoH) report, Reconfiguring the Department of Health’s Arms Length Bodies, published last week, reveals plans to abolish NHS Estates, along with 17 other Arms Length Bodies (ALBs) in a bid to shave £500m off NHS spending by 2007.

NHS Estates has 218 staff. Inventures, its property and consultancy arm, has 204 employees. The report says a small core of staff will be transferred to the DoH, with other functions, such as hospital design, switched to the NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency (PASA), whose role will be extended to take on procurement and contracting functions from other ALBs.

Where ProCure 21 sits in these new arrangements is as yet unclear.

Peter Woolliscroft, partnering chief at NHS Estates, told CJ: "Nothing has been decided yet. That is something we will look at over the next few weeks. ProCure 21 may be carried out via the DoH. We just don’t know yet.

"What we would like is to continue to deliver a national programme with a national perspective, delivered nationally. But it wouldn’t be as efficient as a regionalised component."

Woolliscroft wrote to ProCure 21’s 12 Principal Supply Chain Partners (PSCPs) last week, reassuring them that the abolition of NHS Estates "will have no effect" on the ProCure 21 programme. He added: "We are not sure what the final solution will look like. I know very little more than what is in the report."

In a statement this week, NHS Estates chief executive Peter Wearmouth said: "Over the next three months, NHS Estates will be working through the detail of the report. Most of what, if not everything, we do will find a new home. There will be continuity in all work streams, but in the future delivered through a different entity."

One PSCP told CJ: "I know PASA has been hoping for an expanded role in ProCure 21. It has approached us to ask if there was any synergy between its framework agreements and our work, but we couldn’t see a role for it since we have our own integrated supply chain."

Plans to sell off Inventures to Miller Ventures fell through earlier this year when Inventures’ £400m property portfolio was earmarked by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister for a national low cost housing programme.

The consultancy practice was left with NHS Estates and has yet to be sold off.