Wednesday 19 June is National Estates and Facilities Day and NHS organisations across the county are thanking all of those who work behind the scenes to keep our hospitals, community settings and GP surgeries running.

Lincolnshire Integrated Care Board, Lincolnshire Community Health Services NHS Trust, Lincolnshire Partnership Foundation NHS Trust and United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust are inviting 1,100 estates and facilities colleagues to take a break during the day and reflect on all of their hard work and achievements.

The team covers a wide range of roles, many hidden behind the scenes, but all critical to the running of the county’s hospitals, 33 community sites and GP surgeries, as well as to the experience of patients and staff. This includes porters, switchboard teams, catering teams, housekeepers, deep clean teams, maintenance teams, linen services, capital projects teams and so many more.

They are also responsible for the multi-million pound developments and structural upgrades taking place across the county’s hospitals, as well as managing the day-to-day services, buildings and critical infrastructure.

Every year across the county’s hospitals and NHS community settings:

• Housekeepers and teams across all of the sites serve patients more than 4 million cups of tea and more than 1.2 million meals on the wards
• Porters help more than 60,000 patients get to where they need to be in the hospitals and can walk up to 10 miles in a shift
• Linen services supply more than 3.7 million pieces of linen
• Deep Cleaning Teams deep clean 80 wards using hydrogen peroxide vapour machines at United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust
• Hospital restaurants serve more than 150,000 hot meals to patients, visitors and staff
• Switchboard Teams handle more than 3,000 calls every day.

Jacqui Bunce, Programme Director, Strategic Partnerships, Planning & Estate, NHS Lincolnshire ICB said: “It’s really important we recognise the wide range of roles across the system-wide team in Lincolnshire, especially since they are often ‘unsung heroes’ who play an important part in the NHS team that delivers health and care day in day out.  They keep us all fed and watered and the hospitals and community settings running efficiently, as well as maintaining our buildings and creating the state-of-the-art environments that our patients and colleagues deserve.

“They work tirelessly behind the scenes and it is great to have a national day where all of their hard work is recognised and we can take the opportunity to say a big thank you for all of their hard work.”