For episode 49 of the National Health Executive podcast, we were joined by David Hemming, who is service lead for major programmes at NHS Shared Business Services. We spoke to David before our Estates online conference, where he featured on our Building the Hospitals of the Future panel.
We asked him about the NHS estate, Hospital 2.0, and the New Hospital Programme (NHP)—right before chancellor Rachel Reeves announced a pause to the NHP so it could undergo a “complete rest”.
“Many people are aware of the NHP, [but] there are different levels of understanding of what it's actually going to deliver—there is still quite a lot of work to actually get that level of communication and stakeholder engagement out.”
He continued: “Part of this is [that] I’m bringing my knowledge of NHP. Do I have a complete and full knowledge of the NHP? I would say ‘no’ because it’s such a large programme—there are many different elements, but I’m also keen to understand, from other people’s perspective, what is their perception of the NHP [and] where do they think there are issues because that helps my understanding.” Knowing this can help NHS SBS modify their service offering.
Listen to the full podcast to hear David’s thoughts and stay tuned for National Health Executive’s next magazine edition for what the NHP pause could mean for the health system.
