NHS Open Space

NHS Property Services (NHSPS) are a government-owned company which exists to help the NHS maximise its estate, ensuring that it is consistently fit for purpose so that healthcare professionals can deliver excellent patient care. Their portfolio is one of the largest in the UK, comprising more than 3,000 properties with 7,000 tenants across England. The properties range from listed buildings to state-of-the-art integrated health campuses.

In order to maximise the utilisation of their property portfolio and to improve the process for hiring their range of health, wellbeing and community spaces, by the NHS, NHSPS sought a software system to help efficiently manage the booking of facilities.

NHSPS chose Kajima Community and their BookingsPlus software system as a starting point, as it offered the closest ‘off the shelf’ solution that was then developed to create a bespoke software solution, NHS Open Space, which suited all of NHSPS’s needs. As well as continually developing and improving the implemented software platform, Kajima Community are also responsible for customer support, with a dedicated team of Helpdesk Coordinators who are on hand to help trouble-shoot and users through their user journey.

Since launching the booking platform in 2019 NHSPS and Kajima Community have expanded delivery to over 1,100+ spaces across 200 NHS sites, nationwide. A community of 4,500 users access the software to book facilities and deliver much-needed NHS services, with over 230,000 bookings processed through the system - accounting for over one and a half million hours of vital patient service delivery. The introduction of the software has brought a significant decrease in the time spent administering room bookings, increased confidence in the bookings process, streamlined administration, made room booking more accessible and centralised room booking information and processes.

In 2022 NHSPS plan to continue their expansion across their property portfolio, as well as explore potential new partnerships with other property owners to add additional healthcare estates onto the platform and increase choice for users. Working with Kajima Community, the ambition is to develop a single lettings solution for the entire NHS.