Axminster charity Project Food has been featured as a case study in the NHS Property Services 'Healthy Places' programme review, which has been published this week.

NHS Property Services is a government-owned company that manages 10% of the NHS estate, including GP practices and hospitals. Their multi-million-pound programme, which was expanded in 2021, has identified 300 projects that would help transform the NHS estate, support Integrated Care Systems, and enable excellent patient care. 

Project FOOD is a social prescribing hub which offers a programme of food education courses for young families and vulnerable people across Devon.

To support their service, NHSPS brought a void kitchen space at Axminster Hospital back to life, expanding their redevelopment of the hospital to create a safe and fit for purpose space for the charity.

The recent expansion of NHS Property Services' Healthy Places Programme has been marked with the release of its first year in review, in which Project Food features.

The report describes how the programme aims to deliver benefits to patients and service users, including:  

• Multi-million-pound investment in upgraded and new spaces, with circa 150,000sqm of improved space across the NHS estate (58,500sqm completed so far) 
• Over four million patients to benefit through our capital investment projects (two million benefitted so far) 
• A more efficient estate, with c. 80,000sqm vacant space removed for re-use or disposal, raising capital for reinvestment into priority sites across the NHS estate.

Projects have ranged from refurbishments and new builds, to accommodating social prescribing initiatives, estate optimisation and the repurposing of vacant space. 

The first two years of the programme have delivered more than 170 projects, with significant milestones met on others including the submission of a business case to support the full completion of the programme.

The newly published year in review report describes some of this in more detail, and includes key statistics, regional case studies and a forward view of the next steps for the Healthy Places programme. 

Simon Taylor, portfolio optimisation director at NHS Property Services, leads on the Healthy Places scheme.

He said: "We are thrilled to have made such fantastic progress with our NHS colleagues across the first 300 projects and are very proud to share our 'year in review' brochure with customers and stakeholders to celebrate this success.

"Healthy Places has been a real team effort so far and is a fantastic example of collaboration across the entire NHSPS business and with our customers/partners to deliver improvements for patients and the NHS workforce.

"We are now looking forward to the next stage of the programme and placing an even greater emphasis on tackling health inequalities, supporting the levelling up agenda, and responding to NHS priorities such as community diagnostic centres and COVID-19 recovery support."