Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what mechanism her Department uses to assess the estate requirements of (a) the NHS and (b) primary care.

The Department and NHS England are responsible for the National Health Service estate, including assessing current requirements and policies. In 2018 we supported the NHS to prepare sustainability and transformation plan (STP) infrastructure strategies, which informed programmes for capital investment.

In 2019 the Department published ‘Health Infrastructure Plan: A new, strategic approach to improving our hospitals and health infrastructure’ which launched the New Hospital Programme. In addition, NHS England collects data through the Estates Return Information Collection which assesses the safety, quality, efficiency and effectiveness of the NHS estate.