East Midlands

About the region

The health sector is critical to the East Midlands because as well as providing healthcare to the resident population of the region, the sector also employs approximately 140,000 people. This represents 7% of the whole healthcare sector in the UK and approximately 6% of the region’s economically active population.

As a region generally we are improving against many national indicators but there are still significant areas where more needs to be achieved. This includes raising productivity, improving skills and educational levels particularly in the region’s three main cities – Derby, Leicester and Nottingham.

Skills for Health is actively working with employers and stakeholders to look at better and more productive ways of working as well developing joint approaches to address skills shortages.

The regional debate about an East Midlands Sector Skills Agreement, based on the agreement for England, was launched at a conference in April 2008. Delegates gave overwhelming support for the national solutions and rated the importance locally to inform the regional action plan. (A conference report and action plan will be posted on this site in the near future).

Skills for Health is currently involved in a number of projects with a variety of organisations looking at a range of solutions across a range of healthcare specialities. Learning from these pilots will be transferable across the NHS.

In addition, the Skills Academy for Health is in its development phase involving collaboration with employers to co-ordinate skills and training provision across the region.