RECENT NEWS

Health and care property company, Prime, has completed a deal to purchase full shares in joint venture company, Interserve Prime.

The company will be known as Prime Partnering Solutions. Prime says the acquisition ‘will have no impact on ongoing projects, other than to offer increased efficiency and the convenience of a single point of contact to clients and suppliers’. It added: “Interserve remains a key supply chain partner to Prime, and the two companies continue to enjoy a good working relationship.”

Assa Abloy UK, a division of Assa Abloy Group, which claims to be ‘the global leader in door opening solutions’, has unveiled its new name, with the business known as Assa Abloy Opening Solutions UK & Ireland.

The company says the new business descriptor reflects the Group’s ongoing commitment to strengthening the Assa Abloy brand, and helping its customers ‘to better understand the organisation’s solutions, services and capabilities’.

Oxford VR, a spin-out company from the University of Oxford, has raised £3.2 million with investors including Oxford Sciences Innovation, the University of Oxford, Force Over Mass, RT Capital, and GT Healthcare Capital Partners.

The DiMHN and BRE’s joint work to develop a fitness-for-purpose standard for products used in mental healthcare settings is progressing well, with the goal being a launch at this year’s DiMH conference.

At the DiMHN’s 2018 AGM in Manchester in October, President, Joe Forster, paid tribute to the work of the Board members, Workstreams, and the Network’s commercial members, and, after the formal proceedings had closed, said one individual who exemplified this commitment and contribution was Russell Hogarth, who recently stepped down as a Board member.

DiMHN was represented recently at the launch of an important new book at London South Bank University.

Following the retirement ‘by rotation’ of Russell Hogarth, Clive Stone, and Cath Lake, as directors of the Design in Mental Health Network during 2018, Jenny Gill reported at the Network’s 2018 AGM in Manchester in October that while the latter two individuals had been re-elected, a new member had been elected to the Board.

Speaking at the Design in Mental Health Network’s 2018 AGM at October’s Healthcare Estates 2018 event in Manchester, the DiMHN’s chair, Jenny Gill, explained that all the DiMHN Workstreams had had a very busy year.

RSK Group, which claims to be the UK’s leading integrated environmental, engineering, and technical services business, has announced its latest acquisition – design, property, and construction consultancy, Pellings – the ninth acquisition that RSK, a privately owned company with 36 international offices, over 2,700 staff, and an annual turnover of £200 m, has made in the 2018/2019 financial year.

The NHS Long Term Plan, launched on 7 January, sets out how the £20.5 billion budget settlement for the NHS, announced by the Prime Minister last summer, will be spent over the next five years, and includes measures to prevent 150,000 heart attacks, strokes, and dementia cases, as well as to provide better access to mental health services for adults and children.

The Department of Health says the Plan ‘focuses on building an NHS fit for the future’, by:

•enabling everyone to get the best start in life;

•helping communities to live well;

•helping people to age well.

The Mental Health Policy Group has published a ‘Consensus Statement’ with ‘partner organisations committed to improving the lives of people with mental health problems’.

The Door & Hardware Federation (DHF) has released a new Best Practice Guide for the locks and building hardware industry covering the British Standard for Mechanically Operated Push-Button Locksets (BS 8607:2014 + A1:2016).

Static Systems Group recently welcomed committee members from the Design in Mental Health Network (DiMHN) to its Staffordshire headquarters, where the DiMHN committee combined a CPD visit with its latest board meeting.

The main aims of the visit, which was co-hosted by Static Systems Group and Guardian Staff Safety Systems, were to establish opportunities for collaborative working and highlight the latest product developments in attack alarm, fire, and call systems.

Sean Duggan, chief executive of the Mental Health Network, part of the NHS Confederation, has welcomed Secretary of State for Health, Matt Hancock’s announcement of a new strategy for dealing with violence against NHS staff.

Confirmation of the extra £20.5 bn more in ‘real terms’ annual funding for the NHS by 2023-2024 announced this June, – including at least £2 bn annually for mental health, and an end to the use of the current PFI model, were among the notable elements impacting on health and social care in Chancellor Philip Hammond’s 2018 Budget Speech delivered on 29 October.

The third in a series of ‘Design With People in Mind’ guides to be published to date by the Design in Mental Health Network – this time focusing on the importance of stakeholder engagement in the design of both new-builds and refurbishments in mental healthcare, was launched at IHEEM’s Healthcare Estates 2018 in early October.

100% Hackitt – an industry initiative to encourage the government to deliver all of the recommendations contained within Dame Judith's report – was launched in Westminster on 22 October by Local Authority Building Control (LABC) and the British Board of Agrément (BBA).

NHS Trusts in England are being strongly encouraged by NHSI Improvement to apply for s share of £46 m in Public Dividend Funding to implement ‘energy-efficient’ LED lighting in their healthcare facilities, in the process not only improving the patient environment, but also potentially cutting their annual electricity usage by 5-20 per cent.

Announcing the money’s availability during an ‘NHSI Surgery’ held on 10 October during IHEEM's Healthcare Estates 2018 event, Fiona Daly, NHSI’s National Sustainability and EFM Workforce lead / Operational Productivity, announced that against a backdrop where the organisation is ‘committed to working with provides to help realise savings’, implementing energy-saving LED lighting schemes in healthcare facilities had been shown to offer ‘proven return-on-investment’ and both maintenance and carbon savings.

Find Memory Care has teamed up with Tees, Esk & Wear Valley NHS to enhance the environment at Acomb Garth in York, a unit for male adults with dementia.

Intastop has launched a ‘hygienic, impactresistant sheet’ as a cladding for walls and doors.