Five Year Forward View Delivery Plan - Workforce update

In response to the Next Steps on the NHS five Year Forward View, Professor Ian Cumming, Chief Executive, Health Education England said:

Health Education England is continuing to grow the workforce in priority areas such as general practice, nursing and urgent and emergency care, helping to support a future NHS that will be bigger and better funded than ever before.

We are providing more staff available to be employed by the NHS but we are also developing new roles such as nursing associates, providing new routes into the NHS workforce and supporting the delivery of care that patients need both now and in the future. More staff are training to join the NHS than are leaving every year.

We will train more than 15,000 GPs between 2015 and 2020. We have ensured nearly 2000 nurses have returned to the front line through our return to practice programme and we will target up to a further 2000 to be supported back into work through this programme over the next two years.

And we are tackling the pressures on doctors in training, our recent report ’Enhancing junior doctors’ lives’ set out progress made to address issues with their working conditions and morale.

HEE will produce a Workforce Plan for England by end of April 2017. Local Workforce Action Boards will support their STPs in revising, updating and delivering their local priorities.