Pressure groups call for £900m training budget boost

The Nuffield Trust, King’s Fund and Health Foundation looked at demand for nurses and in general practice, where shortages are particularly acute. It concluded that a radical expansion of nurse training was needed, with the government giving those in training cost of living grants of £5,200 a year.

The numbers entering nurse training as postgraduates should be tripled, it added. But, even if these measures are implemented, the gap between supply and demand cannot be filled domestically by 2023/24. An extra 5,000 nurses a year must be recruited from abroad to keep the NHS functioning. To achieve this, the think-tanks said, the government must make wide exceptions on proposed immigration salary restrictions and fund the visa costs that will be incurred by NHS providers.

The upcoming NHS workforce plan must embrace these actions or nurse vacancies will double to 70,000 and GP shortages in England will almost triple to 7,000 by 2023/24, the report said. Such gaps in the workforce will make long-term plan goals such as improvements in general practice and better access to mental healthcare, impossible to achieve.

At the end of the third quarter, NHS providers in England had 100,500 whole-time equivalent (WTE) vacancies, according to NHS Improvement. This was about 5,000 WTEs fewer than at Q2, but the oversight body said vacancies, especially in nursing, remained a challenge. Providers have more than 39,000 WTE registered nurse vacancies – 316,000 WTE nurses are currently employed by providers.

Health Foundation research director Anita Charlesworth (pictured) said workforce was a ‘make or break issue for the health service’. She added: ‘Unless staffing shortages are substantially reduced, the recent long-term plan can only be a wish list.

‘Decisive policy change backed by targeted investment could eliminate nursing shortages over the next decade. But if the NHS is to have access to the skilled health workers it needs, the government must stop seeing funding for the workforce as a cost to be minimised and prioritise investment in training more staff.’

Candace Imison, workforce strategy director at the Nuffield Trust, added: ‘If any of our lofty aspirations about better outcomes and digital technology are to become a reality, we need to get the budget for developing skills at least back to where it was.’