Our CEO, Jonathan Murphy, called for third party development to get the profile it deserves as a route to improving primary care estate, at a conference in London this week.
In a speech to Westminster Health Forum’s event ‘The future for NHS estates: investment, optimisation and the Naylor Review’, Jonathan flagged that third party development – or 3PD as it’s often abbreviated - has invested more than £1.7bn in NHS primary care buildings in the last five years alone: buildings which accommodate more than three and a half thousand GPs and provide the space for the care of more than eight and a half million patients.
Jonathan said: “3PD is a model which GPs themselves have used, for many decades, to procure new premises with a highly successful track record - it’s the route being used for many current projects on site and under consideration. At Assura alone, we have never had such a strong pipeline and we’ve doubled our development team in the space of a year because of the number of projects out on site or in development right now.
“3PD’s track record was why we teamed up with our colleagues in the sector, Octopus Healthcare and Primary Healthcare Properties last year, to jointly launch the Primary Care Buildings Pledge. The pledge set out the potential for 3PD to inject more than £3bn of capital to help government improve primary care estate over a five year period - equivalent of 750 new medical centres across the country.
“As we’ve heard today, government has accepted Sir Robert Naylor’s recommendation that at least £10bn of investment needs to go into NHS estate. In a statement to the Commons earlier this month, the chair of the new NHS property board, Lord O’Shaughnessy, reiterated the role for private sector investment in reaching that sum - where it is good value for the taxpayer. We think there’s an opportunity to step up the pace of improvement to primary care buildings by simply amplifying the existence of 3PD to GPs, CCGs and STPs in the mix of options they explore.
“Across all political parties there’s agreement on the need to radically improve the NHS’ buildings and infrastructure. ETTF can only go so far, the NHS’ capital resources are slim and Phoenix will, of course, have its limits.
“So to get GPs and patients into the fit-for-purpose premises they deserve, we need quicker progress on getting good value capital into projects, spades in the ground and improvement works underway.
“3PD may still be somewhat under the radar, despite its delivery of some of the most innovative buildings in the country like West Gorton in Manchester, the country’s first zero carbon GP surgery. But it has capacity, creativity and capability.”