NHS Digital has published information relating to the costs of providing, maintaining, and servicing the NHS estate.
The Estates Return Information Collection (ERIC) includes national and local level information from all NHS Trusts in England that delivered secondary care and ambulance services between 1st April 2019 and 31st March 2020.
Complete data was received from all 224 NHS trusts, including 10 ambulance trusts.
The report includes information at the trust and site level, including those trusts operating under a Private Finance Initiative (PFI) arrangement.
ERIC reports at a national level in key areas such as:
- Financial information
- Safety
- Buildings – quality, function, area, and utilisation of space
- Utilities – energy and water
- Waste
- Car parking
- Inpatient food, laundry and linen, cleaning and portering services
- Comparisons with previous years are also available for certain areas.
The scope and content of the ERIC collection are reviewed annually to ensure that the information gathered is necessary for, and relevant to, monitoring efficiencies and the funding of the NHS estate.
While the 2019–20 publication is based on data relating to the financial year 1 April to 31 March as normal, the publication date was moved to January 2021 from its usual release in October. This change allowed trusts to have an extended window to check and submit their data as normal operations were disrupted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the publication is planned to return to its usual timing next year and is currently expected to be released around October 2021.
