ESTH launch Green Plan

The NHS recently launched its commitment to delivering a ‘Net Zero’ Health Service, recognising that the climate emergency is a health emergency.

At Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust, we are committed to delivering our contribution to the Net Zero plan and to adopt the broader principles of sustainable development.

Today, we have published our Green Plan, approved by the ESTH Site Leadership Team, Finance Committee and the Board in June 2023, as a key first step in helping us develop a sustainable healthcare strategy.

Having built a new Group sustainability team, we will produce a Group Level Sustainability Strategy (co-ordinated with a Group Estate Strategy) with Site Level plans and targets. We will use ISO 14001 (Environmental Management) as a framework to produce all of these documents, ie, setting out key NHS / legal requirements, developing actions, objectives, targets and KPIs and delivery methods.

As a priority we will look to develop costed action plans so that there is clarity on the cost of implementation of the Green Plan for each site.

Over the becoming months we will be creating a dedicated sustainability working groups which will require representation from all areas to help us to achieve our net zero target.

We owe it to future generations to ensure that we deliver this plan.