| 3 July 2025
Skills for Health is a not-for-profit organisation committed to the development of an improved and sustainable healthcare workforce across the UK. Responding to the workforce changes outlined in the NHS’s 10 Year Health Plan (published today), Managing Director Jon Czul, comments:
“It is encouraging to see that government is being bold in its attempt to transform the NHS workforce in the face of severe fiscal and macro-economic headwinds. However, the practicalities of these plans will need to be considered carefully in the context of integrated workforce planning across the NHS.
“Making shift patterns work for everybody through providing greater flexibility is a commendable ambition that could unlock much needed labour supply to support NHS services. The move could also help support the NHS to realise valuable cost savings and reduce its spend on bank and agency staff. The day-to-day management of these new arrangements, however, could prove tricky, further complicating the finely tuned balancing act that is NHS rostering.
“An ambition to train more doctors and nurses at home in order to lessen the NHS’s reliance upon healthcare professionals from abroad could be difficult to deliver over the term of the plan. The commitment to removing bottlenecks in medical training is to be welcomed, however, given the current and historic workforce models, it is worth noting the difficultly ahead to create a service that doesn’t require the skills of overseas workers.
“Another key aspect of the 10 Year Health Plan is the assertion that the NHS Long-Term Workforce Plan grossly overestimated the workforce that the NHS requires. This appears to be predicated on the assumption that digital and AI will be able to streamline many of the inefficient systems and processes that sap productivity. The potential of AI is certainly compelling, but its implementation across the service will necessitate significant expansion of the specialist workforce in addition to the roll out of new training across the NHS. There will be fairly substantial upfront costs associated with this and a period of adaptation that will need to be considered.
“Finally, the Department for Health and Social Care is right to identify how an assessment of the NHS skills-mix could hold the key to freeing up clinicians. Whether ‘training to task’ as a means to achieving this is sensible or not is a different matter; any significant restriction of job autonomy runs the risk of spreading dissatisfaction amongst the affected workforce.
“Taken as a package of measures, the 10 Year Health Plan provides much-needed guiderails that, in prospect, will be transformative to the health of the nation. Attention must now turn to delivering on the Plan’s promise, ensuring that the workforce is accommodated and consulted at every step of the way.”