NHS England has unveiled a ‘historic’ 15-year workforce plan, detailing a major expansion of training places – including the first-ever doctor apprenticeship.
The long-awaited long-term plan outlines how thousands more doctors and nurses will be trained in England every year, to boost capacity in a health service beset by huge workforce gaps.
The NHS England workforce plan was launched by NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard and prime minister Rishi Sunak this morning (30 June).
NHS workforce plan
Nurses leaving the profession earlier than planned
Sunak pledged £2.4bn over the next five years to open additional training places.
Pritchard said: “This is a truly historic day for the NHS in England – for 75 years, the extraordinary dedication, skill and compassion of NHS staff has been the backbone of the health service – and the publication of our first-ever NHS Long Term Workforce Plan now gives us a once in a generation opportunity to put staffing on sustainable footing for the years to come.
“As we look to adapt to new and rising demand for health services globally, this long term blueprint is the first step in a major and much-needed expansion of our workforce to ensure we have the staff we need to deliver for patients.”
More medical training places
The number of places in medical schools will increase from 7,500 to 10,000 by 2028 and will reach 15,000 by 2031/2, while the number of GP training places will increase by 50% to 6,000 by 2031. The first new places will be available from September 2025.
More nursing training places will be available by 2028/9, taking the total number of places to 28,000. By 2031/2, this number will grow to nearly 38,000.
The plan places a greater emphasis on apprenticeships. In the next five years, the proportion of NHS staff trained through apprenticeships will increase from 7% to 16%, and by 2031/2 22% of clinical staff training places will be apprenticeships. A new apprenticeship for doctors will be launched next year.
Dentistry training places also feature in the plan. These will increase by 40% so that there will be 1,100 places available by 2031/2.
We believe apprenticeships will provide a particular boost in areas where it’s harder to recruit staff and reduce barriers to entry for more disadvantaged people looking to start a career in medicine.” – Matthew Taylor, NHS Confederation
Targets have been set for the recruitment of more staff into mental health, community care and primary care roles.
NHS England will also embark on a major retention drive by providing more flexible working options and career development opportunities to provide clear routes to senior jobs. This will include national funding for continuing professional development, and a tie-in period for newly-trained dentists, who will be required to work in the NHS for a period after graduating.
The plan highlights how artificial intelligence can be adopted to improve logistics and scheduling of staff, as well as proposals for “robotic assisted surgery”.
Hope for staff
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said the workforce plan offered hope to the almost 1.4 million staff working in the NHS who have waited “years” for a strategy to boost recruitment and retention.
He said: “There should be much to welcome in the plan, not least the planned doubling of medical school places – this is something NHS leaders have long been calling for. While this will take years to bear fruit, it is essential to help future-proof the NHS.
“The ambitions around apprenticeships and degree apprenticeships are also critical if we are to increase the size of the NHS workforce and attract more people into the service from diverse backgrounds. We believe apprenticeships will provide a particular boost in areas where it’s harder to recruit staff and reduce barriers to entry for more disadvantaged people looking to start a career in medicine.”
Taylor said he hoped the plan provided reassurance to staff that “help is on the way to spread the workload, improve working conditions for them and improve care for patients”.
He added: “While international recruitment will always have an important role to play, the measures outlined in the plan should, over time, help to reduce the NHS’s reliance on overseas staff and on the use of agency staff. We absolutely need to ensure our international colleagues are retained to develop and achieve their potential, but longer term the development of the domestic staff pipeline will help ensure that we are not depriving other countries of staff for the sake of our own health service.”
Plan must be refreshed regularly
NHS Employers chief executive Danny Mortimer said more information on the level of investment required was needed, as funding for extra training places will only run until 2028.
He said it was important for the plan to be refreshed every two years to ensure the NHS is able to respond as demands change.
“There is the opportunity for local leaders through their systems to take a clearer role in the leadership of the plan, and to increasingly reflect those areas where there are opportunities to converge with our colleagues in social care and wider public services,” he said.
“Backing in the plan to increase the contribution of different roles and ways of working will be very much welcomed by our members. Patients in some areas are seeing the very real benefits of new roles – such as clinical navigators, nurse associates and physician associates – but their availability and development varies.”
There’s no point having more students if there are no academics to teach them, no spaces to learn in and no consultants and GPs to supervise them once they graduate.” – Dr Latifa Patel, BMA
Jon Czul, head of consultancy and research at not-for-profit organisation Skills for Health, said: “The intention to train more frontline staff, whilst ramping up efforts to upskill and retain experienced staff, should help to alleviate some pressures on the service and will therefore be welcomed by patients and NHS organisations alike.
“As ever, the devil is in the detail and we echo the cautious optimism with which this plan is being greeted, recognising that whilst this is only a starting point, it at least sets out an ambition (if not a fixed roadmap) to begin to tackle the NHS’s workforce challenges.”
Trainee doctors need support
The British Medical Association, whose junior doctor members are set to go on strike in July followed swiftly by their senior doctor colleagues, said it needed more clarity around how doctors would be supported through their training.
Dr Latifa Patel, BMA representative body chair and workforce lead, said: “There’s no point having more students if there are no academics to teach them, no spaces to learn in and no consultants and GPs to supervise them once they graduate.
“This is why retention is key, and where today’s announcement feels particularly light. It’s all well and good training new doctors, but pointless if they don’t stay in the workforce. Investing in medical school places while refusing to reverse years of pay erosion for doctors and fixing the broken pay review system, is completely illogical and uneconomical. Doctors will leave for better-paid jobs abroad and we won’t see the benefits of increased recruitment.”
Dr Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said: “The longevity of this plan recognises that the improvements needed will take time – there are no shortcuts to delivering quality.
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“We hope this will receive cross-party support and the commitment to long-term NHS workforce planning will be both universally supported and sustained by each future government.”
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