Estate management arrangements

15

Although the primary purpose of NHS estate is to facilitate and support delivery of clinical services, the estate must also meet a set of additional requirements set by the Department of Health (DH) and the laws of the land. As a valuable public and NHS asset, the trust has a responsibility to both the population it serves and to the NHS of which it is part to maintain and improve its estate. This is an on-going and expensive task, and reinforces the need to dispose of surplus assets to support that investment.

16

KMPT provides hospital and community mental health services across Kent and Medway, as well as more specialist mental health services across a wider footprint. The estate comprises of 80,773 m2 of internal accommodation (what is known as the gross internal area - GIA), made up of;

• 50 freehold properties and
• 23 leasehold properties (including PFI).

Currently, there are 33 main sites throughout Kent and Medway including 27 inpatient wards and seven community homes with a total number of circa 425 beds, some 14 community team bases and three “corporate” buildings.

17

Although the trust operates mainly across Kent and Medway, it also provides some specialist services beyond the county. The Mother and Baby Unit (MBU) at Dartford, for example, serves the south east of England region. A map of trust main locations is included as Annex B and it can be seen from this that there is a good geographical “spread” of locations across the county. The trust has sought to maintain a building/clinic presence in all of the major population centres across the county and its workforce are also able to see patients on request in other healthcare and social care settings. Of course, significant staff interaction with service users still takes place in the service user’s own home.

18

The trust manages maintenance of its freehold estate through an external contract with local building maintenance provider ICOM, an arrangement established in 2018, and provides its own staff to provide hotel services (mainly housekeeping/cleaning, site management and porters) for most of its facilities. For leasehold and PFI properties, other hotel services arrangements are in place. In late 2018, the trust entered a contract with a national major hotel services provider, ISS, for catering services, previously provided under a number of different contractual and organisational arrangements.

19

KMPT directly employs just over 200 staff across its estates and facilities services. It costs around £19.3m each year for the trust to hold and service its estate. For 2018-19, this comprised of £18.2m for running costs, £3.1m capital charges and just over £2m income, mainly made up of rental income and facilities services to other Kent NHS organisations.