Revised NHS workforce plan must also look at wider challenges facing health service

Responding to news that the government will publish a revised NHS workforce plan in the summer with a bigger focus on training and hiring more GPs, health visitors and community nurses, the interim chief executive of NHS Providers, Saffron Cordery said:

"Trust leaders fully back plans to shift more care from hospitals to the community and it makes sense for the NHS to update its workforce plan to ensure it has the right staff in the right places to deliver this much-needed change.

"But it’s vital that the revised workforce plan also looks at the bigger picture and the wider workforce challenges facing the health service.

"With vacancies of over 100,000 in the NHS in England alone and ongoing worries about staff burnout and morale, more needs to be done to protect, support and retain existing staff, including GPs, who are under unprecedented pressure.

"This will be vital for the NHS to deliver the prime minister’s ‘milestone’ for the NHS to treat 92% of patients within 18 weeks and to address long waits across other services, such as mental health and urgent and emergency care. We also need to remember the scale of the challenge facing the social care workforce, which is not covered by this plan.

"While the devil will inevitably be in the detail of the revised workforce plan, trust leaders will also want reassurances that it will be backed by full funding."