The end of an era and new beginnings

Firstly, since beginning the interim role as Chief Workforce Officer for NHS England last year, it has been already clear from the conversations I’ve had with workforce colleagues that bringing together the People Directorate and Health Education England is the right thing to do. It will unite us in our shared aims and commitment to our NHS People.

So many of you have been with HEE throughout our journey, learning more about our work, and recognising that the work goes on; the mission to create a bigger, different, more inclusive workforce remains and together we will get there as we close one chapter and open another.

From 1 April, I officially stepped into the role of Chief Workforce Training and Education Officer at the new NHS England, leading the Workforce, Training and Education (WT&E) Directorate. This means that NHS England has now taken on responsibility for all activities that were previously undertaken by HEE. This includes planning, recruiting, educating, and training the health workforce; ensuring that the healthcare workforce has the right numbers, skills, values and behaviours in place to support the delivery of excellent healthcare and health improvement to patients and the public.

We’re now three weeks into our new beginning in the new NHS England, and we’d like to reassure our partners and learners that there are no immediate changes if you currently use HEE’s services. The ways that you contact us and the services on offer remain the same.

Now we have transferred into the new NHS England, our next step is to transform, and our new Workforce, Training and Education Directorate design is ambitious.  It puts in one place accountability for current and future NHS workforce. It broadens the scope and nature of responsibilities to the whole NHS workforce, pre-employment to post retirement.  It requires us to work in an integrated way internally within the directorate, with other NHSE directorates and our regions. We will also work with external stakeholders, including those in health and care systems, networks, and providers; and people and organisations (global to local), to ensure we do only what we can do to add value to the NHS workforce delivering high quality services for all, taking a continuous improvement approach.

My aim is that the new NHS England will benefit from strong relationships across the education sector, working together to deliver the workforce the NHS needs. We will continue to build on the work of HEE, the NHS England People Directorate and other workforce colleagues to ensure funding policy for education is transparent, consistent and enables the delivery for the NHS workforce, representing value for money. More levers, greater engagement with workforce issues and space for system leaders to look to the future alongside current priorities – now is the chance to make life better for our NHS people and patients for decades to come.

Many thanks for your continued support.

Best wishes

Navina

Dr Navina Evans

Chief Workforce Training and Education Officer