Expert insight: NHS estates teams struggle with maintenance backlog as fragmented asset data risks patient safety

NHS estates teams are navigating an increasingly precarious position as compounded building maintenance decisions that were once purely operational now directly impact patient care and safety, says SFG20, the industry standard for building maintenance.

Across the National Health Service, trusts are managing a staggering £15.9 billion maintenance backlog whilst also contending with infrastructure incidents and recruitment freezes that are preventing them from meeting growing demands. At the same time, scrutiny from trust boards and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has intensified, with estate performance now firmly in the spotlight when it comes to patient outcomes and organisational risk.

The connection between buildings and patient care has never been more direct. Infrastructure incidents no longer simply affect facilities—they result in lost clinical time, cancelled procedures, and disruption to care delivery. Estates decisions have moved from the background to the forefront of healthcare operations.

Yet despite the critical nature of their work, estates teams are facing a fundamental challenge: fragmented asset data. Most NHS trusts already hold data about their assets, but this often exists scattered across spreadsheets, CAFM systems, condition surveys and legacy records accumulated over decades—frequently incomplete, inconsistent, and of poor quality. The result is a difficulty in answering questions on the types of assets that are within buildings and how they should be maintained.

The scale of this asset data quality crisis was revealed in SFG20’s State of Facilities Management Report 2025. Only one in 10 facilities management professionals reported having 100 per cent accurate asset registers. More than a third (34 per cent) revealed that they did not update their asset registers or did not know how frequently they are updated. Nearly a third of FM professionals (31 per cent) still keep their asset registers in spreadsheets, whilst a further five per cent split their assets across a mix of software, spreadsheets, and paper-based registers.

According to SFG20, the challenge facing estates leaders is clear: how to maintain safety and compliance standards whilst working within the constraints of limited budgets, frozen headcount, and fragmented information systems. The traditional answer—do more with less—is reaching its practical limits.

Davy Clark, Implementation Consultant at SFG20, shares his insights on how inconsistencies in asset registers and building asset management is impacting NHS estates across the UK.

He said: “One of the most common issues we encounter is the lack of consistency and specificity in asset registers. Too often, assets are recorded with vague descriptions like ‘boiler’ or ‘pump,’ making it incredibly difficult to map them to the correct maintenance tasks. 

“Several factors contribute to this challenge, including the collection of asset data across large estates, which may have been surveyed at different points in time and by different people, causing inconsistencies in data quality and accuracy. 

“This leads to inefficiencies, increased risk, and compliance challenges. Ensuring asset data is consistently structured, complete, and digitally maintained in a single source of truth is essential—not only for effective planned maintenance but also for long-term cost savings and compliance.

“To combat this issue, I will be hosting a webinar on Thursday 5th February (12pm), with Paul Bullard, Product Director at SFG20, to discuss the new SFG20 Mobiliser, a world-first asset-to-schedule mapping software, designed to help FM teams quickly and accurately identify the correct SFG20 maintenance schedules for their assets. Please sign up at the link here: https://www.sfg20.co.uk/mobiliser-nhs.”