People plan: nurse training must be fully funded

Publication of the people plan has been postponed until later this year under emergency measures taken by the NHS to allow commissioners and providers to focus on delivering care to patients with the coronavirus, Covid-19. The plan is due to set out detail of workforce plans and meet the NHS long-term plan ambition of reducing the nursing vacancy rate to 5% by 2028.

An NAO report, The NHS nursing workforce, said the health service increased its nursing staff by 5% between 2010 and 2019.

But, between July and September 2019, trusts reported 43,500 full-time equivalent vacancies – the vacancy rate at the end of the period was 12%.

The report highlighted the failure of the government’s plan to increase student nurse numbers by removing the nursing bursary in 2017 – with student numbers actually falling. There are now plans to reintroduce bursaries from September.

Commons Public Accounts Committee chair Meg Hillier (pictured) said the need for more nursing staff was being highlighted by the current pandemic.

‘As the coronavirus spreads, the importance of the NHS and nurses who look after us becomes ever more apparent,’ she said.

‘There are 44,000 nursing vacancies. Plans to increase the numbers of nurses starting degrees have failed to meet expectations.

‘It takes three to four years for policies to train new nurses to have an impact. The government’s people plan must be fully funded and finally start to tackle the real reasons why there are not enough nurses.’