NHS Open Space, a service launched by NHS Property Services (NHSPS), has established 40 new sites on the flexible booking platform.  

The service allows for health, wellbeing and community services to flexibly book a range of spaces, including examinations rooms and offices, on a pay-as-you-go basis. The additional 40 sites brings the total number of bookable sites to 1,100 across England. 

The aim of the expansion is to ensure more choice for health and wellbeing providers. The service offers clinical and non-clinical spaces for hire on an hourly or daily basis. This is intended to provide flexibility, as well as affordable pricing. 
 
As part of the NHSPS goal to optimise the NHS estate, the booking platform makes more efficient use of the estate to minimise vacant or underused space.  

Christopher King, Principal Strategic Asset Manager at NHSPS, said: “We have seen more than 976,000 hours of care provided to patients across England with this scheme, showing just how vital a range of services are to local communities. From counselling and physiotherapy to vaccine administration, we hope to enable excellent patient care and deliver on the NHS Long-Term Plan through our spaces.” 

The booking platform is being delivered in partnership with Kajima Partnership to build a scalable solution to make better use of NHS space and prioritise patient care.  NHSPS hopes to continue the expansion of the community of over 2,900 service users, providing a wider range of services from their local NHS hubs.  

Skye Riordan, Clinic Administrator at Wren Healthcare said: “We have been using NHS Open Space since October 2020 as it offered a range of flexible NHS spaces to run our clinics in. We’ve had absolutely no problems using the service, the space has been great, and rooms are always ready to go for our bookings.” 

Samantha Scott, Health Checks Project Manager at Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We use NHS Open Space rooms on a daily basis, all over Kent for our outreach NHS Health Check clinics. The helpful feature on the booking system allows you to book multiple rooms on different days for the same site.

“When we book the rooms, we usually have several dates to book to ensure we have enough clinics for our invites that are sent, so using the platform has made the process quicker and easier to find rooms for the services for different days and book several clinics all in one go.”