Interim plan promises immediate workforce action

The Interim NHS people plan, published today, said there would be a need to expand all established healthcare professions and introduce new professions to deliver the NHS long-term plan. Multidisciplinary working will increase, with health and social care services being delivered in a more collaborative way to meet rising demand and ensure affordability.

However, it acknowledged that a full, five-year plan, setting out the national transformation agenda in detailed, costed action plans will not be published until after the next spending review. The spending review will clarify the funding available for education and training, and for digital and capital change. The scope of the review is unclear, with the chancellor cautious over making spending commitments before the future relationship with the European Union has been clarified and with a new prime minister set to take office in the coming weeks. There have been reports that the review could cover just one year.

In the meantime, the interim plan focuses on actions that can be taken immediately. Some of these measures will make a difference in 2019/20, it said. These include expanding clinical placement capacity by 5,000 for the September 2019 pre-registration nursing intake.

Five themes are picked out in the local plan:

• Making the NHS the best place to work – addressing issues of growing pressure, not having enough time with patients and bullying and harassment. The issue of poor staff experiences is reported by black and minority ethnic staff in particular

• Improving leadership culture – developing and spreading positive, inclusive, person-centred values across NHS leadership. The plan said it was no coincidence that trusts with good and outstanding ratings for use of resources also had good and outstanding ratings for being well led. This demonstrated the link between engaged staff and greater productivity

• Addressing urgent workforce shortages in nursing – while there are shortages in other staff groups, nursing needed the most urgent attention. There are 40,000 reported vacancies in substantive nursing posts and the plan sets out a number of measures, including training new nurses, improving retention, increasing return to practice and international recruitment. The measures will ensure the NHS nursing workforce increases by more than 40,000 by 2024. The full people plan will set out further actions to reduce substantive vacancy levels and reduce the reliance on temporary staff – proposing to reduce vacancy levels to 5% by 2028. It will also seek to return funding for continuing professional development to previous levels over five years

• Delivering 21st century care – the advent of more care in the community, greater personalisation and the introduction of new technologies will offer opportunities for multiprofessional working. This will require a growing and more flexible workforce and the plan sets out the transformation needed as well as a new programme to release time to care

• Developing a new workforce operating model – people-related activity will be carried out at the optimum level, whether national, regional, system or organisational, with an expectation for an increasing role for integrated care systems as they develop.

Health Education England chair David Behan said: ‘Today's plan calls for the NHS to put all staff front and centre of the way it operates to make the NHS the best place to work so that we can attract and retain the very best people – including within our own organisation. Along with other NHS organisations we must collectively focus on our people including working environment, career development and ways of working.’

NHS Providers chief executive Chris Hopson (pictured), who contributed to the work on the plan, said workforce was trusts’ top concern. ‘That’s why this interim people plan is so important. It’s the first, clear, public recognition from our national system leaders of the severity of the workforce challenges the NHS faces. You can’t solve a problem until you honestly and openly acknowledge its existence, scale and size.’

He added: ‘All of us, inevitably, wanted more. More money, more staff and more complete solutions to long running problems like pensions and immigration rules, delivered now. But, given the spending review timing and a Brexit focused government, that was never going to be possible. Given that context, we’d rather welcome the progress this interim plan has made, than bemoan what it doesn’t contain.

‘However, it’s vital that these issues are addressed in time for the final plan. That includes the right outcome for NHS education and training budgets in the forthcoming spending review.’

Niall Dickson, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, agreed funding will be key. ‘Our verdict – this is welcome but an effective workforce strategy will need investment. This will need to be delivered in the next spending review. We are delighted the plan responds so positively to our call for a much greater role for local leaders in workforce development.’