The Estates Return Information Collection (ERIC) a mandatory collection for all NHS trusts including Ambulance trusts. It comprises information relating to the costs of providing and maintaining the NHS Estate including buildings, maintaining and equipping hospitals, the provision of services e.g. laundry and food, and the costs and consumption of utilities.

As part of our analysis of the 2018/19 data, an enhanced data quality assurance exercise was conducted in conjunction with NHS England/Improvement (the collection sponsors) and NHS Digital . Both organisations worked closely with trusts to clarify requirements and support accurate reporting.

Data users should note that several data fields are currently labelled as unreliable due to having changed definition since the previous reporting period, or due to being introduced relatively recently. Please ensure you use these statistics with reference to the Data Quality Statement. This will be updated should any errors be reported after publication – They can be found at the link below.

For the purpose of the Model Hospital raw data from ERIC is used to generate metrics to give a view of the estate. Raw data historic and current ERIC data can be found at the following link along with the metric definitions:

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/estates-returns-information-collection