Hestia Healthworker Homes is a partnership between a group of London NHS charities – Imperial Health Charity, CW+, Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity, UCLH Charity, Barts Charity, and Guys and St Thomas’ Charity.
We have come together to assess the challenges that NHS staff experience in accessing good quality, affordable housing in London, and to see how the charities might be able to address this need.
We believe this will be a vital enabler to the sustainability of the NHS and the recruitment and retention strategies of our partner NHS Trusts. The group is chaired by Charles Williams.
Hestia Healthworker Homes seeks to support NHS staff working in London. The NHS workforce leads identify those staff that are a highest priority for their Trust.
Hestia Healthworker Homes will work with Trust accommodation offices to establish the demand for affordable accommodation for NHS staff. We will also host a platform to ascertain interest directly from NHS staff.
We will work with affordable housing providers to bring together affordable housing supply, and then match available housing with those in need who are registered on our platform.
We will also seek to bring forward affordable housing projects by providing skills and expertise in bringing together site owners (which may include the NHS charities themselves, as well as other NHS surplus land), investors, developers and operators.
A working group of the chief executives of the charities attached to the London based NHS Hospital Trusts (‘The London NHS Charities’) has been established to consider the impact of housing on NHS staff welfare and how the charities might better address this issue.
The sustainability of the NHS is largely dependent on the recruitment and retention of its workforce. In London, that workforce is either not choosing or leaving the capital due to the financial pressures of finding suitable affordable housing combined with long commute times. This report aims to quantify the housing need and suggest possible solutions to meet that demand.
© Hestia 2023
