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NHS crisis: Patient care hit by disrepair in buildings

Beams and props holding up parts of the ceiling at a Norfolk hospital

In February 2024 The Shared Data Unit (SDU) looked at the scale of the backlog of repairs affecting hospitals, and the human impact of those: thousands of potentially-harmful incidents including critically-ill patients being moved when rainfall came through the ceiling.

Methodology

We analysed data from the last five years of the NHS’s Estates Returns Information Collection (ERIC) to look at the cost of the backlog of repairs facing hospitals in the NHS. These repairs are grouped into four risk areas: “low”, “moderate”, “significant”, and “high risk”. To ensure that comparisons were accurate, historical costs were adjusted for inflation using the Construction output price indices on all construction (new work and repair and maintenance).

In some cases trusts have merged to create new trusts. Where possible we have used old trusts’ figures to provide historical context to the new trust’s repair costs, using NHS data on successor organisations.

Data on clinical incidents was taken from the same dataset. These are defined as those leading to “services being delayed, cancelled or otherwise interfered with owing to problems or failures related to the estates and infrastructure failure.” Incidents include problems with electrical, water or ventilation systems, internal fabric and fixtures, roofs and structures, or lifts and hoists.

Before 2021 this was only provided at trust level, so we have limited our analysis to the two latest years during which data has been provided at site level. In the most recent data hospitals also provide (where incidents have been recorded) data on the first, second, and third most clinically impactful incident type, and so we have included this too.

Further information on the methodology can be found in a dedicated methodology document

Data

Scripts

As well as the Python notebook to gather, combine and clean the data on hospital buildings, R notebooks were used to create a bespoke analysis for 112 separate trusts, and publish that as a webpage with a page detailing the picture at each trust. The code for those notebooks is available in this repo in the scripts folder and at the links below.

Partner usage

In addition, the story was covered across BBC television and radio, including packages by Hugh Pym for BBC Breakfast and Alix Hattenstone for Radio 4’s Today Programme. Questions were put to the health secretary Victoria Atkins on both programmes. BBC South West's 6.30 news programme carried the story, as did news bulletins on Radio 2, Radio 4 and Radio 5. Pieces were broadcast across 16 local radio outlets in total: Yorkshire, Scotland, Ulster, Northampton, Suffolk, Oxford, Three Counties, Surrey, Wiltshire, Nottingham, Lincolnshire, Cumbria, Cambridgeshire, London, Shropshire and Berkshire. On the Sunday following publication the matter was discussed on Politics North.

Victoria Atkins

Data from the project was also used by the BBC England Data Unit during the 2024 general election in its article NHS: Your concerns, questions and stories

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  • Jupyter Notebook 100.0%