The NHS maintenance backlog now stands at £15.9bn, up 15.7% in a single year. It is usually quoted as evidence that estates budgets are not keeping pace with the problem. That is true. But the figure hides something more useful underneath it.
The backlog is not one number. Under the Estates Returns Information Collection (ERIC), it is split into risk categories, from high to low, and the high-risk portion alone now stands at more than £3.5bn. That matters more than the headline total. Two NHS trusts can report identical backlog values on paper but carry very different levels of actual risk, depending on where that maintenance is needed. A leaking roof over a storeroom and a failing electrical system in a theatre count towards the same total. They are not the same problem.
Ask estates leaders what is driving the backlog, and ageing infrastructure comes out ahead of everything else, cited by around 63%, compared with funding constraints at 53%. This suggests that even with more capital available tomorrow, many trusts would still be constrained by not knowing precisely how old, or how risky, each part of their estate really is.
That is the second problem. The data behind most prioritisation decisions is not as reliable as it needs to be. Roughly one in 10 facilities management (FM) professionals say their asset register is fully accurate, while close to a third still manage it using spreadsheets. If the register is unreliable, so is everything built on it, including the risk categorisation that feeds ERIC returns and informs capital allocation.
To give you a better picture of where this visibility gap tends to exist, we have put together a free guide, Taking Control of Your Estate, covering data silos, audit readiness and a short self-assessment for your own trust.
Managing the backlog means managing the data first
A trust that can say, with confidence, “This is what is high risk, and here is the evidence” is in a fundamentally different position from one working from a register that has not been reviewed in 18 months. It is not just about securing more capital. It is about standing behind a prioritisation decision at board level and answering the follow-up question in the same meeting.
This is where a single source-of-truth platform earns its place. At Invida, we model condition, age and risk against one underlying asset register, captured in the field through mobile surveys rather than reconstructed from old paperwork. The figures behind an ERIC return and a capital bid become the same figures, allowing a trust to move from a static register to a prioritised, evidence-backed plan, rather than having to reconcile three versions of the truth first.
If a computer-aided facilities management (CAFM) or integrated workplace management system (IWMS) vendor changes ownership, some organisations have found themselves migrating to a different platform on someone else’s timeline
The part that gets overlooked: who actually owns the data?
Here is a question worth asking before you need the answer. If your trust changed its maintenance contractor tomorrow, would you retain the full history of your assets, condition surveys, certificates and job records?
For many trusts, the honest answer is no. That history often lives within the contractor’s own system. The same exposure exists one layer up, at the software level. If a computer-aided facilities management (CAFM) or integrated workplace management system (IWMS) vendor changes ownership, some organisations have found themselves migrating to a different platform on someone else’s timeline.
None of this needs to be the case. It is a structural decision, and it is the one we designed Invida around from the outset. The trust owns the data, workflow and record. Contractors work within that environment under their own permissions, rather than holding a separate copy, so a change of contractor or vendor ownership does not mean losing access to the trust’s own history. Backlog decisions remain grounded in continuous data, reducing the risk of data loss during handover.
INVIDA runs as a single-version software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, so every trust uses the same release and new features arrive automatically, without a separate upgrade project or invoice
Managing it on a budget that is not growing
None of this is much use if it prices trusts out. Most estates teams are managing the backlog on a budget that is not keeping pace with it, so the software intended to solve the problem should not add a second, unpredictable cost.
That is why we price INVIDA as a flat, portfolio-based fee: one fixed cost, unlimited users and no per-transaction charges. Add your whole team, including contractors, at no extra cost, with no penalty for holding more data as your register matures. This supports the direction in which trusts need to be moving.
It also removes a quieter concern that keeps trusts on ageing systems longer than they would like: the risk of switching. INVIDA runs as a single-version software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, so every trust uses the same release and new features arrive automatically, without a separate upgrade project or invoice. Onboarding is also delivered for a fixed fee, meaning the risk of a slow migration sits with us, rather than creating additional costs for your budget.
The £15.9bn figure is not going to shrink on its own. But a trust that owns its data, trusts its risk categories and is not paying more every time its system grows is in a far stronger position to bring the backlog down.
Visit our healthcare page to find out how Invida can help bring your estate data into one place, improving visibility and supporting better-informed decisions.
