| 15 December 2025
Skills for Health, in collaboration with The Advanced Therapy Treatment Centre (ATTC) network, is launching a new consultation to inform its work developing the first national framework to upskill the NHS workforce on advanced therapies. With funding from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and Innovate UK, this will build on the ATTC network’s work improving advanced therapy clinical trial readiness and help ensure the UK maintains its position as a globally attractive location for clinical research. The consultation is now open and is inviting input from stakeholders in life sciences and across the NHS.
Advanced therapies are innovative new medicines based on genes, cells or tissue replacement. These therapies treat the root cause of a range of diseases or disorders including cancer, sickle cell disease and spinal muscular atrophy.
Although the UK is a world leader in clinical research – with representation in 9.5% of global advanced therapy trials – further action is needed to ensure that the NHS can deliver these therapies to patients at pace and scale; and this includes upskilling the workforce that supports these trials across the UK.
To support this aim, the ATTC network, which is coordinated by the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult, is working with Skills for Health – the sector skills council for healthcare – to develop the field’s first ever national capability framework.
The capability framework will outline the knowledge, skills and competencies required for both established and future job roles that involve advanced therapies. Frameworks for other staff groups are already used widely across the NHS to plan, support and fund recruitment, training and career development initiatives.
A first iteration of the advanced therapy clinical trials framework has been drafted by the ATTC network expert reference group, ahead of its anticipated publication early next year. A public consultation on the proposal has now opened and is inviting input from representative stakeholders in life sciences and across the NHS.
Fiona Thistlethwaite, Medical Oncologist at The Christie, and Director of iMATCH, part of the ATTC network, is a member of the expert working group responsible for developing the framework. She comments:
“The advanced therapies clinical trials competency framework is central to ATTC’s training programme and supporting growth and scaling up of the workforce.
“Training and education are critical NHS workforce enablers for the delivery of advanced therapy trials to meet the needs of patients, trial sponsors and NHS organisations across the UK. The framework helps to fulfil this objective by providing an agreed upon and standardised reference point for the training, development and funding of future advanced therapies careers.”
Vicky Yearsley, Senior Manager – Qualifications and National Occupational Standards at Skills for Health, comments:
“The creation of a capability framework, as part of a national Advanced Therapy Training and Education programme will help address the existing challenge around a lack of advanced therapy-specific knowledge for trial delivery, research and support services workforces.
“Having a framework in place is a significant step towards an expansion of the workforce dedicated to advanced therapy clinical trials and scaling up delivery of gene and cell therapy treatments across the NHS.”
Finn Willingham, Northern-Alliance ATTC Operations Manager and Chair (Exec) of the ATTC network Training and Education Board, comments:
“With the substantive detail of the framework mapped out, this consultation stage has been launched to capture the views of stakeholders and ensure that the final resource is robust and fit for purpose.
“We therefore welcome representations from stakeholders across life sciences, the NHS and wider to ensure that the framework meets the needs of the sector and reflects latest advancements in the field.”
Stakeholders are invited to feedback on the proposed advanced therapy clinical trials framework by the closing date of 2 February 2026
Take part in the consultation