Gillian Colquhoun, our Chief Digital Information Officer, recently spent time with the Sustainability Team to learn more about their work and the difference they are making across NTW Solutions and Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (CNTW). The team’s ultimate goal is to get CNTW to carbon net zero but Gillian heard how cutting carbon goes hand in hand with cutting waste and inefficiency. The team are bringing in significant amounts of external funding to replace inefficient heating and lighting systems and adding new solar panels, all of which reduces the cost of our buildings meaning vital cash can be reinvested to support better care.

Gillian heard that while the team is based in NTW Solutions the Green Plan is owned by CNTW and many of the actions sit within the Trust. While the team do deliver some projects it is much more about coordination to achieve our shared goals. The Green Plan has 12 workstreams supported by subgroups working across both CNTW and NTW Solutions so the team are never short of things to do.

Given current financial pressures the team began by talking Gillian through the scale of opportunity around grant funding. The past year has been a bumper one, bringing in £8 million of external funding to support sustainability projects. A big win was the funding to replace the old gas boilers at St Nicholas Hospital, others were to add solar panels onto buildings to cut our energy bills, and to install energy efficient lighting to save even more money.

Projects mostly involve supporting services to make changes rather than delivering them directly, such as helping the move towards digital prescriptions which eliminates the need for the expensive specialist paper that prescriptions are printed on. Alongside their project work, the team have day‑to‑day operational tasks such as managing utilities contracts and invoices (spend on energy and water is around £6m annually) and managing energy and environmental compliance as well as mandatory reporting requirements. 

The visit continued with a walk around St Nicholas Hospital to see recent improvements and those now underway. Gillian viewed the old gas-fired steam boilers that are due to be replaced and heard how inefficient the current steam system is and how around half of the energy is lost within the system. These boilers will be replaced by efficient, low carbon electric air source heat pumps, a project that is projected to reduce Trustwide carbon emissions from energy by around 10%. She also saw LED lighting and sensors, as well as looking at areas that already have efficient air source heat pumps.

Gillian heard about the wide range of benefits that come from sustainability projects taking place across other sites such as at Hopewood Park, where willow trees, which are particularly thirsty, are being planted to help reduce the risk of flooding. At Ferndene the outdoor spaces are being developed as therapeutic environments for service users.

Gillian left with a real appreciation of the scale of the team’s work but also the scale of the opportunity to bring in funding and make our buildings and systems cheaper and more efficient to operate, ultimately saving money alongside reducing our environmental impact.