NHS Surplus Land, Quarter 4 2023/24

For the previous quarters of the financial year, the requirement was for data providers to only update data if there were any changes or new plots to declare. Since the quarter 4 extract represents the end of year position, we required data providers to use the "commit" function to confirm that all data had been reviewed.

210 trusts were required to submit a return but, despite issuing several reminders, we did not receive one from West London NHS Trust. As they had two plots on the system of a sizeable nature that were not confidential, we have included them in the results (to avoid skewing aggregate measures). Users should treat the details in the plot level information with caution (the .csv file and plot level detail in the interactive Power BI report).

To close the quarter 4 collection and prepare for publication of results, we centrally force committed the unfinished return, after which we had 428 completed plots on the system belonging to 94 trusts plus NHS Property Services. 116 trusts confirmed they had no surplus land to declare. 

Some plot information provided was found to be inaccurate during our validation process; please see details in the "Known Issues" section. 

All data are provided via NHS England's Estates and Facilities Management (EFM) system, which includes internal validation methodology to help towards responses that are accurate and within expected ranges. The collection system has functionality to ensure that only relevant questions are completed e.g., by adding / removing data fields depending on answers provided to specific related questions. A record of data cannot be completed until all required responses have been entered.

For quarter 4, providers were only required to enter and/or update data if there have been any changes during quarter 4 2023/24 but all trusts were required to confirm their position was up to date. For those trusts with no surpllus land, this meant declaring this on the EFM system before the extract deadline, which was communicated well in advance to providers by NHS England. As usual, the system was briefly closed for access whilst the extract was taken and then the next quarter being opened was announced to data providers. 

One plot belonging to North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust was marked as sold, with a contract exchange date in April 2024; this should have been marked as surplus in this return, and will have affected the total sales receipt and estimated sales receipt (£625,000 was allocated to sales receipt, rather than estimated sales receipt). This error was not identified prior to preparation of final figures, due to the trust in question having submitted well past the deadline whereby it was not possible to query or alter data.

The following list describes known issues relating to the Quarter 4 2023/24 return. We have included details of the provider type, and how many affected plots were “sensitive”, as data users will only be able to access details for non-sensitive plots in the .csv file.

The next section lists data quality issues in the values provided against each data field in the quarter 4 return. We have included details of the provider type, and how many affected plots were “sensitive”, as data users will only be able to access details for non-sensitive plots in the .csv file.