But each health and care area order their equipment from the central NHS. It is not expected that each area look after their own PPE etc.

Can you imagine the chaos if they did?

https://www.nhsconfed.org/resources/...ics-on-the-nhs

In the above document it says that in England there are,

207 clinical commissioning groups10
135 acute non-specialist trusts (including 84 foundation trusts)
17 acute specialist trusts (including 16 foundation trusts)
54 mental health trusts (including 42 foundation trusts)
35 community providers (11 NHS trusts, 6 foundation trusts, 17 social enterprises and 1 limited company)
10 ambulance trusts (including 5 foundation trusts)
7,454 GP practices
853 for-profit and not-for-profit independent sector organisations, providing care to NHS patients from 7,331 locations

So equipment such as PPE are centrally sourced. It is not the responsibility of each of the above to do the procurement.

And here is the website that they use for placing their orders.

https://www.supplychain.nhs.uk/covid19/ordering/