Sustainability Annual Report 2021-22

In 2021-22, our sustainability programme continued to measure our environmental impacts and support initiatives to improve the sustainability of the organisation and its supply chain against the backdrop of another unprecedented year of reporting. 

The majority of our employees continued to work from home throughout the year, undoubtedly impacting our operational carbon data which revealed reductions across the estate (a 28% reduction in total CO₂e emissions from the previous year). During the year, once we moved out of the extended lockdown phase and our offices started to reopen, NHS Digital’s hybrid working policy and guidance was introduced. It is recognised there is a future need to calculate and include the carbon cost of people working from home, and we have made some progress in improving our understanding of the impacts and benefits of hybrid working and enhancing our tools and reporting.

In October 2021, NHS Digital assumed responsibility for the National Disease Registration Service, transferred from Public Health England, resulting in an increase of full-time equivalents employed by NHS Digital and the addition of employee sites. 

Despite the addition of the inherited NDRS sites, the consolidation of our Leeds and London sites to BREEAM certified buildings has helped us achieve a well performing and stable outlook for our existing estate, which has enabled us to widen our focus towards the benefits of our services and the impacts of our Scope 3 emissions footprint. 

The sustainability programme coordinated contribution from across all areas of the organisation, from corporate functions like Human Resources, Estates and Commercial, to ICT and Live Services, which supported the delivery of sustainability improvements throughout the year. The programme engaged these key areas of the business through 6 operational workstreams.

The programme worked with colleagues and suppliers to improve access to sustainability data. We have increased transparency of our environmental impact and raised awareness of our sustainability agenda. Engaging with colleagues on the subject, the programme created and circulated bespoke communications and facilitated webinars and online training.

In November 2021, the merger of NHS Digital and NHS England and Improvement (NHSEI) was announced, which put a pause on all new corporate strategies, including our development of a 5-year sustainability strategy which we had planned for in last year’s report. As shown throughout this report, we instead focused our efforts on improving NHS Digital’s sustainability reporting in anticipation of collaborating with NHSEI on the sustainability agenda. Looking forward, we hope to take our aims and actions with us into the new organisation and work together to share ideas, innovate, and push boundaries to expedite our shared sustainability goals.