Capital investment pays for all the elements – such as buildings, machines and computers – that allow healthcare workers to be as productive as possible. Yet the UK has invested poorly in health capital compared to peer nations for decades, writes NHS Confederation.
The Darzi review highlighted Health Foundation research showing that the UK has spent £37 billion less between 2010 and 2024 than comparable OECD countries. Lord Darzi notes that:
“The NHS has been starved of capital and the capital budget was repeatedly raided to plug holes in day-to-day spending. The result has been crumbling buildings that hit productivity – services were disrupted at 13 hospitals a day in 2022-23. The backlog maintenance bill now stands at more than £11.6 billion and a lack of capital means that there are too many outdated scanners.”
Poor investment means a less efficient service. NHS England’s analysis shows that degraded estate contributes significantly to current productivity challenges and that 12,000 recent estate failures stopped clinical services in the past two years alone. Healthwatch England has also found that the poor estate is worsening patients’ experience of NHS services, while the Institute for Government argues that:
“Crumbling buildings, creaking IT and a lack of equipment will continue to seriously hamper public service performance unless the next government takes a new approach to capital spending.”
Date: 22 October