| 15 September 2026
The NHS estates and facilities workforce is facing a significant generational shift. More than 94,000 people are directly employed in estates and facilities roles, accounting for over 6% of the total NHS workforce – but 42% are aged 55 or over, while just 4% are under 25.
Recruitment is already challenging in some areas. Vacancy rates range from 3% to 22%, depending on the role, while NHS Jobs data has shown a re-advertisement rate of 57.6% for estates and facilities management roles, compared with a national average of 34%.
At the same time, what this workforce is being asked to deliver – and the skills needed to deliver it – is changing.
For healthcare organisations, that raises two important questions: do we understand the estates and facilities workforce and capabilities we will need in the future – and are we creating the development pathways that will enable people to build them?
Answering both means connecting strategic workforce planning with structured workforce development.
A workforce challenge on the scale of the NHS estate
The scale of the challenge becomes clearer when we look at the breadth of services the estates and facilities management (EFM) workforce is responsible for.
Across the NHS, estates and facilities teams are responsible for much more than buildings and maintenance. Their work spans engineering and maintenance, cleaning, catering, portering, security, waste, laundry and linen, transport, car parking, sustainability and other services that keep healthcare environments safe, efficient and operational.
The estate itself is substantial. Across secondary care alone, the NHS estate extends to around 27.8 million square metres and 13,400 buildings. The estimated cost of addressing backlog maintenance has more than tripled, from £4.9 billion in 2015/16 to £15.9 billion in 2024/25.
The consequences aren’t confined to buildings. In 2024/25, there were 4,100 clinical service incidents caused by estates and infrastructure failure, and 8,700 estate-related incidents overall.
Outside of the NHS, the social care sector and private healthcare sectors face similar pressures.
This means the EFM workforce has a critical role in supporting safe, effective healthcare – from keeping buildings and infrastructure operational to delivering the essential services that patients, staff and clinical teams rely on every day.
Managing an estate and service portfolio of this scale, while responding to changing models of care, new technology, sustainability targets and growing operational pressures, requires organisations to think carefully about having a workforce with the right capabilities in the right places, both now and in the future.
Tomorrow’s workforce will build on today’s capabilities
Estates and facilities teams already hold a broad range of technical, operational and management expertise, from compliance, risk and contract management to engineering, service delivery and asset management.
The challenge is how those capabilities will need to evolve as the demands on healthcare organisations change.
Alongside established EFM expertise, organisations increasingly need to build on or develop capability in areas such as sustainability and net zero, digital technology and data, energy and resource management, resilience, new regulatory requirements and changing models of service delivery.
NHS England’s Green Plan guidance specifically asks trusts and integrated care boards to assess the workforce capacity and skills required to deliver their plans, including consideration of apprenticeships and NHS estates sustainability career pathways.
There is a wider workforce dimension too: nine in ten NHS staff support the NHS net zero ambition, while six in ten say they are more likely to stay with an organisation taking decisive climate action.
So how can organisations prepare their EFM workforce for these changes?
Strategic workforce planning can help organisations look beyond immediate vacancies and understand future demand and supply, changing roles and skills, succession risks and where capability gaps may emerge.
For estates and facilities, that means asking questions such as:
- Where are we most exposed to retirement or the loss of specialist knowledge?
- Which roles are already difficult to recruit?
- What skills will be needed to support priorities such as sustainability, digital transformation, compliance and new ways of working?
- Do we have people with the potential to progress into critical or leadership roles? And do they have access to structured leadership development, coaching and mentoring?
- Where could developing existing employees reduce reliance on external recruitment?
- Are there clear development and progression routes that will help attract new people into EFM and retain the expertise already within the workforce?
But identifying a workforce or skills gap is only useful if an organisation can act on it.
That makes structured development pathways, including recognised qualifications and apprenticeships, an important part of the workforce planning response.
Clear workforce development pathways can help organisations build capability where it is needed, create progression routes for existing staff and prepare people to take on more specialist, supervisory and leadership responsibilities. They provide consistency around workforce development and confidence in the skills capabilities being embedded, helping organisations connect investment in learning to the capabilities they know they need.
Recognised qualifications and apprenticeships can support those development journeys, giving employees a structured way to build and demonstrate knowledge and competence. Training can provide a vital route into employment for new entrants to the EFM workforce or support progression into leadership or specialist functions.
Building the next generation – while developing the workforce we already have
The NHS Estates and Facilities Workforce Action Plan identifies ’developing our people’ and ‘building the next generation of estates and facilities management people’ as two of its four key areas of work.
That means looking at both ends of the workforce challenge: creating routes for new people to enter the profession while giving the existing workforce opportunities to develop and progress.
This is where visible, structured development pathways become particularly important.
For new entrants, clear career pathways can make estates and facilities a more visible and attractive career choice. Showing how someone can enter the profession, develop their skills and progress into more specialist or senior roles can be an important part of attracting the next generation of talent.
For existing employees, development opportunities and recognised qualifications can help people broaden their skills and demonstrate competence, particularly in line with he NHS action plan’s ambition for all EFM first and middle managers to have access to leadership, coaching and mentoring training to help with performance and progression.
And for employers, those pathways can form part of a much bigger workforce strategy – helping to address skills gaps, support succession, retain knowledge and build capability from within.
Available support
Understanding your current and future workforce needs is an important first step, but turning those insights into action requires a clear plan for developing capability.
Skills for Health can support healthcare organisations to understand their current and future workforce requirements, identify skills and capability gaps, and develop sustainable workforce plans. This can help organisations move from identifying workforce challenges to prioritising the actions needed to address them.
For EFM teams, this could mean using workforce planning to identify where recruitment is needed, where existing employees could be developed, and where structured development pathways could support progression, succession and retention.
iCQ Awards can support the next stage: turning identified development needs into structured learning and recognised achievement. As a leading facilities management awarding organisation, iCQ provides regulated qualifications and apprenticeship assessments across all levels of facilities management from entry-level roles through to supervisor and leadership levels.
This can provide a practical framework for organisations looking to develop both their current and future EFM workforce, whether that means bringing new people into the profession through apprenticeships, upskilling existing employees, developing future managers and leaders, or supporting experienced leaders to strengthen their coaching and mentoring capability.
For healthcare organisations developing their EFM workforce strategy, the starting point is to identify the capabilities you need, understand where the gaps are, and then build development pathways that connect those needs to the right learning, qualifications and progression opportunities.