Product Update Winter Preparedness 2025 / 2026 – Strengthening Our Response (ICN 3071)
Important Customer Notice Status New Type Product Update
We all know how busy the NHS gets during winter, with rising cases of flu, COVID-19, and other respiratory illnesses. Ensuring robust winter preparedness is a key priority for NHS Supply Chain. While it’s impossible to predict every scenario, we are using seasonal trends and historical data to support stock build for the peak winter period: late October 2025 to the end of February 2026.
It’s imperative that we work closely with customers to understand what products they need, how much they need, and when they need them, so we can respond swiftly and accurately.
In recent winters, demand has exceeded expectations, impacting product availability and requiring rapid, escalated responses. This year, we’re taking a more robust approach to winter preparedness – building on existing work to be better coordinated, resilient, and responsive.
In addition to our standard winter stock build, we are proactively planning to mitigate delivery challenges and risks. This includes scenario planning and forecasting across three demand levels: baseline, moderate, and extreme.
Key areas of focus
Following a lessons learned review, we’ve identified several areas to strengthen our approach:
- Enhanced collaboration across functional teams for winter planning and preparedness.
- Identification of critical products essential to NHS winter response.
- Improved engagement with suppliers and customers, supported by proactive communications.
- Alignment with national strategies, including UKHSA and other key stakeholders.
Expected benefits
These improvements will deliver:
- Better forecasting shared with suppliers for improved planning.
- Stronger customer engagement to understand product needs.
- Greater assurance for stakeholders on our preparedness.
- More efficient stockholding and demand assumptions.
Winter Working Group
This work is being led by an internal Winter Working Group (WWG) – a cross-functional team established in July 2025, meeting bi-weekly to drive actions and improvements.
The WWG includes representatives from:
- Inventory Management
- Supply Chain Demand Planning
- Resilience
- Clinical
- Customer Services
- Customer Engagement
- Voice of the Customer
- Category Teams
- Communications.
Contact us
Customer Service
Latest updates:
Customer Action – Help Us to Help You
We are committed to providing timely updates via this ICN and through regular panels including the Resilience and Service Support call. In the meantime, we are asking customers:
- If your demand for winter-related stock is going to significantly change for 2025 / 2026 versus previous years, please contact your Customer Service Advisor and follow the demand capture process.
- If you are aware of any local guidance, or the introduction of new guidance or policies relating to winter preparedness, for example, mandatory mask wearing in all healthcare settings, please also let us know as soon as possible, so that we can include this detail in our planning.