National Laundry Review

Over the last few years NHS Scotland has reviewed a number of services to assess whether there are more effective ways to deliver these across Scotland.  This is to take account of resources, workforce and ensuring our services are as sustainable as possible.

One aspect of this work has been a national laundry review that has reviewed laundry  units across Scotland, including the Borders Laundry.

As part of this process NHS Borders specifically requested the option of retaining the laundry located at the Borders General Hospital regardless of where other laundries were located across Scotland.

The national work has now been concluded and the technical recommendation from the national Laundry Programme Board does not include maintaining a full production laundry on the BGH site. 

However it should be recognised that this is only a technical recommendation at this stage and the business case and recommendation now has to be considered and further assessed by a number of groups over the next few months, before a final position is reached on behalf of NHS Scotland.

Regardless of the national conclusions it is also important to emphasise that ultimately the final decision on the future of the laundry in the BGH will be the decision of NHS Borders Board. 

We have briefed our laundry staff on the position this work has reached and are now in the process of writing to the many valued customers, across the Borders, who also receive a laundry service from us. This will emphasise that we continue to provide business as usual to our normal high standards.

We will keep staff and customers up to date with what happens next and while we are not in a position to provide detailed timescales currently, these will be communicated as soon as they are available.