Combining two Trusts into one

LOCATION: TEES VALLEY   |   PROJECT AREA: STRATEGIC ADVISORY SERVICES   |   PROJECT STATUS: COMPLETED
CLIENT: NORTH TEES & HARTLEPOOL NHS FOUNDATION TRUST AND SOUTH TEES HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST

The Tees Valley is served by two acute and community services providers, North Tees & Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust and South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. In recent years, the Trusts have been strengthening the way they work together to improve the health and wellbeing for the communities of Teesside and North Yorkshire, by coming together under a group structure, known as University Hospitals Tees. In supporting the Group as they took the first steps towards ensuring they had the right premises, in the right locations, to deliver their acute and community services, Community Ventures undertook a comprehensive review of their freehold and leasehold estate.

The two Trusts operate from a large portfolio of estate across a wide geographical spread, including 277,917sqm of acute premises and 21,624sqm of community premises.

The solution
The methodology adopted for this commission included separate but inter-related reviews of the community and acute estate, comprising data collection, data cleansing, site inspection for a number of the acute sites, detailed analysis and identification of recommendations and opportunities.

In addition, the review incorporated an assessment of vacant and void health estate held by NHS Property Services and Community Health Partnerships.
The commission included a bespoke map, which illustrated the entirety of the estates and the location of services, categorised by each provider.

The core project team for Community Ventures included staff with extensive knowledge of estates reviews and the local area. They worked in partnership with the two provider trusts, with weekly project review meetings involving key stakeholders from all organisations.

The result

The resulting comprehensive review was delivered on time and met the expectations of the Trusts.

The outputs included an understanding of the extent of liabilities and opportunities across the estate, and identified a number of short-, medium- and long-term recommendations.

These recommendations ranged from opportunities to optimise utilisation, ensure value for money from the leased estate, achieve security of tenure for core premises and, utilising our health planning expertise, offer suggestions for a ‘left shift’ of services from the acute sites into the community.

This review then enabled engagement with clinical teams to discuss service-specific rationalisation, co-location and relocation to improve estate utilisation and achieve efficiencies.

A doctor walks through a hospital corridor

"A very impressive and well-presented piece of work - congratulations to all."

Paul Swansbury,
Deputy Director of Estates, Capital and Programmes, South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

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