Palantir in Kent NHS: Trusts, Patient Data and the FDP Rollout

“The NHS is the closest thing the English have to a religion.”

Nigel Lawson meant it as politics, but it works as a warning too. The NHS is not just another public body. It is where we take our children when they can’t breathe, our parents when they fall, and ourselves when something feels terribly wrong. So when a controversial American data company starts providing the software behind a national NHS data platform, the question is not just whether the kit works. It is whether the public can trust the people now wiring up the system.

The company is Palantir. The system is the NHS Federated Data Platform, or FDP. NHS England says the FDP is built on Palantir’s Foundry software. Palantir keeps the intellectual property rights in Foundry, while NHS England says it has protected the NHS’s interests through the contract. Strip away the fog and the position is this: the NHS’s big new data platform rests on Palantir’s core software.

There is a good argument for the idea of the FDP. The NHS is fragmented. Hospitals, community services, mental health trusts, ambulance services and commissioners often hold separate pieces of the same patient and operational picture. Staff lose time chasing information. Waiting lists need cleaning. Beds are blocked. Discharge is delayed. If a data platform genuinely helps staff see what’s happening and move patients through the system more safely, then that’s not sinister. That’s useful.

And NHS England does make important promises. It says Palantir cannot commercialise or market NHS data, cannot use it to build new supplier products such as AI models, and does not control the data in the platform. It says the supplier works only under NHS instruction, access is controlled, and every hospital trust or ICB with its own FDP instance controls who can access that local platform. Those reassurances matter, and they shouldn’t be ignored.

But this is where the story stops being a tidy NHS digital-transformation brochure and starts becoming a proper public-interest row. Palantir is not just any software firm. One of its founders, Peter Thiel, has previously said: “the NHS makes people sick” and claimed British affection for the NHS was “Stockholm syndrome”. Palantir distanced itself from those comments, saying Thiel made them as a private individual, but he remains closely associated with the company’s identity and politics.

That is why the Good Law Project/No Palantir campaign has cut through. Its campaign page calls Palantir a “US spy-tech firm”, says people can check whether their local trust has started using the software, and urges them to email trusts and the Health Secretary to oppose the rollout. That is campaigning language, not neutral civil-service prose. But it captures a real anxiety: the NHS is asking people to accept a data future built around a company many staff and patients do not trust.

The Guardian has reported that more than 200,000 people signed petitions calling on ministers to cut ties with Palantir, and MPs from Labour and the Liberal Democrats have demanded the contract be scrapped. Ministers have defended the FDP’s claimed benefits, but have also indicated the contract could be reviewed at a break point in 2027. In other words, this is no longer a niche tech argument. It is now a political argument about trust, sovereignty, transparency and patient data.

Corporate Watch and other campaign groups go further. Corporate Watch’s August 2025 investigation said NHS England had admitted, in response to FOI work, that only 34 trusts — just under 15% — were actively using the platform and its products at that point. Its March 2026 briefing, produced with health, legal, human rights, union and patient groups, warned about the risks of adopting Palantir’s data platform across NHS England. Again, Corporate Watch is an explicitly campaigning source, but its central question is fair: is the rollout really delivering what has been promised, or is the NHS becoming dependent on a supplier before the public has properly understood the bargain?

Now bring that national argument home to Kent and Medway. This is where it gets interesting — and messy. The local campaign-tool classification you supplied says Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust and Medway NHS Foundation Trust are already using Palantir’s software. It also says East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust, Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust, Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust, and Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust have signed the contract but haven’t started yet.

But NHS England’s own published “live with NHS FDP” list tells a broader story. It lists Dartford and Gravesham, East Kent Hospitals, Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust, Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells, and Medway as live with the FDP. It also lists NHS Kent and Medway ICB as live. Kent Community Health appears on NHS England’s signed-up list, but not on the live list. That means the safest current position is not the simple one-line campaign version. It is this: different public sources appear to classify Kent organisations differently, and that discrepancy itself demands explanation.

East Kent makes the point even sharper. Its own privacy notice now says East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust “is using the NHS Federated Data Platform”. It lists Cancer 360, Health Decision Suite tools and the Local Costing Collection tool as FDP applications in which the trust is participating. So however the campaign tool once categorised East Kent, the trust’s own public privacy notice now uses the words “is using”. We cannot honestly report East Kent as simply “not started” without that qualification.

This is not pedantry. It matters because “signed up”, “live”, “using”, “participating”, “has an instance”, “using a product”, and “realising benefits” are not always the same thing. A trust may have signed a memorandum. It may have a technical instance. It may be using one narrow tool. It may be running patient-flow dashboards. It may be processing identifiable data for direct care. Or it may simply be on the road towards full deployment. Patients shouldn’t have to decode that from bureaucratic breadcrumbs.

For Dartford & Gravesham, the question is no longer whether Palantir/FDP is coming. According to their own FOI responses, it is already here. Dartford and Gravesham says it is using the RTT — Referral to Treatment — product, with inpatient and costing modules in development and Cancer360 planned once those are in place. Medway, says it moved over to the NHS FDP in summer 2024 and is already using the theatres product, with Virtual Wards and RTT under consideration. So the scrutiny now has to move from “will they use it?” to “how is it being used, who can see the data, what safeguards are in place, what benefits have actually been measured, and what happens if the NHS later decides to walk away from Palantir?” If there are gains for patients, publish them clearly. If there are risks, publish those too.

For East Kent, the public question is even more direct because the trust’s own page says it is using FDP and names the applications. Cancer 360 and patient-flow style tools may well help clinicians and managers plan care. That is the praise where it is due: nobody should sneer at software that helps cancer teams, waiting-list teams or discharge teams see the truth faster. But the trust must also explain, in ordinary English, what patient data goes in, who can see it, why the National Data Opt-Out does not apply to direct-care FDP processing, and how patients can understand the system without needing a law degree and a spare weekend.

For KMPT, this is where the Palantir story bites hardest. Mental health data isn’t just another column in a spreadsheet. It can mean crisis, risk, trauma, medication, safeguarding, self-harm, vulnerability and the most private moments of a person’s life. NHS England names KMPT as live with the NHS Federated Data Platform. KMPT’s own FOI response, however, said it wasn’t currently using the FDP and had no plans to integrate into it at that point. That gap needs more than digital-transformation fog and a warm mug of corporate reassurance. Has something changed? Is KMPT technically “live” but not actually using the system? Which product, if any, is switched on? And what mental health data, if any, is involved? For a trust handling some of the most sensitive information in the NHS, the answer should be plain, prompt and public.

For Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells, this is no longer just a “signed up but not started” story. NHS England names the trust as live with the NHS Federated Data Platform, and MTW’s own website says it has joined more than 150 NHS trusts in adopting the FDP. That means the public question has moved on. Which FDP products are actually being used at MTW? Is this waiting-list work, discharge planning, theatres, cancer pathways, costing, patient flow, or something else? What data is going in? Who can see it? What has improved for patients and staff? And if Palantir’s role is as tightly controlled as the trust says, where is the plain-English local evidence showing that? Trust us is not enough. Show us.

For Kent Community Health, the position is clearer — and still important. Its own January 2026 FOI response says the FDP was “not currently in use”, but was at the development stage, with deployment, governance and the common data model still being worked through. It also says no FDP apps were in use, but three were planned: Health Decision Suite, Unified Patient List and Life Cycle Costing. So this isn’t live use, but it is a platform moving towards the front door. And community health is exactly where that matters. This is the world of district nurses, rehabilitation, home care, frailty, prevention and the long, unseen work that keeps people out of hospital. If Palantir’s software is coming into that space, the public shouldn’t find out once it has become just another “system” nobody remembers approving.

Then there is NHS Kent and Medway ICB. NHS England lists the ICB as live with FDP. That is a big deal because the ICB is not simply another provider. It plans and buys healthcare across Kent and Medway. If its FDP instance is being used for population health, commissioning, performance management or system coordination, the governance bar should be higher, not lower. The bigger the system view, the greater the need for public explanation.

This is the core of the story. The NHS may have good reasons to modernise its data systems. It may be true that FDP tools help staff reduce delays, validate lists and coordinate care. It may also be true that Palantir is contractually barred from commercialising NHS data. But none of that cancels the democratic problem. A controversial US company is now embedded in software used across parts of the NHS, and the public picture in Kent is still too muddy.

So here is the Shepway Vox test. Every Kent NHS body touched by the FDP should publish a plain-English local statement answering seven questions: Are you signed up? Are you live? Which FDP products are in use? What patient data is processed? Is identifiable data involved? What has improved for patients? And what is the exit plan if the NHS walks away from Palantir in 2027? No waffle. No “digital transformation journey” soup. Just straight answers.

Because the NHS is not a religion. It is better than that. It is a public service, paid for by the public, staffed by people under extraordinary pressure, and trusted with the most intimate facts of our lives. If Palantir’s software is genuinely helping that service, show us. If the risks are being managed, prove it. But do not expect the public to hand over trust on direct debit. Trust, like data, belongs to the people it comes from.

The Shepway Vox Team

Dissent is NOTa Crime