Award win recognises estates team | News and events

NSFT's Capital Team has been named Estates and Facilities Team of the year at the Design in Mental Health Awards, held in Coventry.

The award means national recognition for a year of hard work, determination and commitment to providing safe, secure and therapeutic spaces for service users.

The in-house design team of six designers and an admin support delivers refurbishment and new-build projects for the Trust, across a wide spectrum of services including secure, adult acute, learning disabilities, medicine delivery/management and dementia wards.

Between them, they have more than 200 years; experience, from 10 to 50 years.

The award submission outlined the challenges of the 2025/26 financial year, starting with a capital programme of £5 million, but successful external bids and additional funding brought that up to £13 million.

The team either designs and manages projects from concept to completion or manages external architects and consultants for larger projects.

David Bird, Senior Capital Projects Manager, said in the application: "Delivering these projects has been a huge team effort, not only by my team but with the help of external architects, consultants, structural engineers, clinical ward staff and current and ex-service users, including getting feedback in regular design meetings.

“Close co-ordination between the Trust’s network of suppliers is critical to the delivery of the projects on time and within budget.”

He said the Trust was fortunate to have an “in house” design team. “Having a team of highly-skilled and experienced staff enables us not only to deliver planned capital projects, but also to react at short notice to requests from within the Trust as well as external agencies as has been proven this financial year,” said David.

“The team takes great pride in delivering projects which meet the needs of the services, they also they have a high level of dedication to provide buildings which have the care of the patient at the heart of what they do and that they would be happy to use themselves.”

This is the second time the team has been shortlisted at the awards, the last time in 2019 in the same category for the then new Kingfisher Mother and Baby Unit, for which they were “highly commended”.

David said: “It’s always nice for the team to be recognised and I couldn’t be prouder. We will continue to deliver, safe, fit-for-purpose buildings and environments which have the care of our service users at the heart of all we do.