Assistive Listening Knowledge Base
  • Design requirements (property owner's standard for new and refurbished premises)

Primary Care/Community Health Premises: Schedule of Standards and Minimum Design Requirements

From https://assistivelisteningknowledgebase.org/evidence/nhsps-2025-primary-care-design-standards/ · record checked 10 October 2026

  • Gardiner & Theobald LLP, for NHS Property Services
  • NHS Property Services

Government (NHS Property Services, a company owned by the Department of Health and Social Care; the document is kept for it by the consultancy Gardiner & Theobald LLP)

Summary

NHS Property Services' minimum design requirements for the primary care and community health buildings it develops or redevelops in England, including fixed loops at receptions and waiting areas and portable loops for consultations.

Key findings

  • Requires a fixed induction loop in all waiting areas, receptions and large meeting rooms, and portable induction loops "for transportation to private areas during consultations/examinations", one for each reception desk.
  • Its engineering section repeats that loops for hearing aid users serve the reception desk, waiting and sub-waiting areas and any group rooms, with one portable loop for each reception point, beside a public address system for each reception area, whose preferred form has a desktop microphone at each reception point.
  • Says glazed screens at reception, where installed, must let patient and receptionist communicate easily without blocking sound, with a gap (usually 150 mm) to pass objects under the screen.
  • Lists privacy at the reception desk (waiting seats not too close to the desk) and an interview room next to reception among the key points in designing reception and waiting areas, and asks for patient privacy and confidentiality through sound attenuation and room design, with acoustic tests of sample rooms.

Limits

Requirements for NHS Property Services' own development and refurbishment projects in England, not a law or a national standard. It sets no loop performance figures, names no measurement standard for loops and does not mention other assistive listening technologies. Version 18 of the document, dated 13 March 2025 in its revision log; the cover says March 2025.

Read the original

www.property.nhs.uk/media/oecla1wz/nhsps-standard-health-design-standards.pdf

Link checked . We link to the original and do not host copies.

Cited in

Cite this source

Gardiner & Theobald LLP, for NHS Property Services. Primary Care/Community Health Premises: Schedule of Standards and Minimum Design Requirements. NHS Property Services. 13 March 2025. https://www.property.nhs.uk/media/oecla1wz/nhsps-standard-health-design-standards.pdf (accessed 10 October 2026).

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