The RCP has responded to the news that a revised NHS England Long Term Workforce Plan (LTWP) will be published in summer 2025.
Commenting on the announcement of the LTWP revision, Dr Mumtaz Patel, acting as president of the Royal College of Physicians, said:
“A well-resourced and well supported workforce will be central to government delivering its three shifts: analogue to digital, sickness to prevention and hospital to community. We therefore welcome the confirmation that a refresh of the NHS England (NHSE) LTWP will be published in the summer of 2025.
“We continue to believe that having a dedicated workforce strategy that is regularly refreshed, with its modelling independently verified, is the right approach to ensure we can scrutinise proposals to ensure we have the right workforce to meet patient demand.
“The 2025 revision must do several things. It must – as we’ve been calling for – set out more detail on expanding medical school places (including plans for increasing educator and supervisor capacity). We need to see more granular data to model the postgraduate medical specialty places needed to meet patient demand. The projections for growth in the physician associate (PA) role need to be reviewed in response to the concerns of the medical community, with an overall commitment to limit the expansion of PA roles.
“As we know, retention is key, and the 2025 revision must be stronger on this. Staff are tired, and burnout and moral injury are becoming a worrying norm. We have to improve the working culture and lives of our staff.
“What we really need to see alongside the 2025 refresh is a commitment to a comprehensive review of postgraduate training. We know people are working and training differently - we need to understand why and the impacts on long-term workforce planning. Competition ratios for postgraduate medical training are changing quickly and a growing number of UK graduates are taking up locally employed roles after they finish foundation training. We need to understand the reasons for this. A review is a vital opportunity to look at these trends, alongside how doctors will want to learn and work in the future and how patient demand is likely to change, so we have a training system that is fit for purpose.
“The independent analysis from the National Audit Office (NAO) provided a range of recommendations that should be accepted in full for the 2025 refresh, particularly the recommendation that assumptions should ‘be generated in transparent and systematic consultation with external stakeholders’. The RCP wants to engage with NHSE and others to ensure future modelling includes our medical specialties.
“It is right that the LTWP refresh will come after the publication of the 10-year plan so we know the workforce needed to deliver the government’s plans and meet patient need. As we said in our submission to the UK government’s Change NHS consultation, current assumptions about staffing numbers, capacity and retention in the short, medium and long-term must feed into the 10-year plan to ensure the vision is ambitious but feasible.
“Shifting care from hospitals to the community will require a change in the way we do things, and the expansion of postgraduate medical specialty places will be key. Physicians work in the community as well as hospitals, and we know that a significant proportion of those on waiting lists are waiting for an outpatient appointment rather than a surgical procedure. We need to transform and reform services and build the right workforce to make certain that more people can get the specialist care they need in the community.
“The UK government will need to deliver sufficient funding to implement commitments in the LTWP revision to ensure we have the workforce needed to change the NHS and we hope to see that reflected in the Spending Review next year.”
Read the RCP’s response to the 10-year health plan consultation.
Read ‘Specialty places must be a focus for the next Long Term Workforce Plan revision’, a blog post by Dr Sarah Logan, Director of the RCP’s Medical Workforce Unit.