Key messages

• Long-term workforce planning for the NHS workforce must focus on how enough health and social care staff will be trained, recruited, and retained in the future. Fundamentally, a fully costed and funded national workforce plan is needed to secure the correct focus and funding for the NHS to properly assess, recruit, and retain the number of extra staff that are needed to deliver services sustainably.
  
  
• Roles in the NHS have to be appealing. Pay, flexibility, work/life balance, job satisfaction, and continuing professional development (CPD) can be improved with additional funding and focus.
  
  
• Investment in culture and wellbeing is key to improving equality, diversity and inclusion within the NHS workforce. Whilst the NHS is the UK’s largest employer of Black, Asian and minority ethnic people, it is not always a good employer of people from minority communities. Improving recruitment, support and opportunity for minority ethnic staff in the NHS will in turn improve quality of care, particularly for minority ethnic populations. Organisational focus and resource to address health inequalities is vital.
  
  
• Internationally recruited workers are integral to NHS delivery of care. We welcomed the Home Office’s recent acceptance of the Migration Advisory Committee’s (MAC’s) recommendations to add care workers and home carers to the Health & Care Worker visa, and to the Shortage Occupation List dependent upon a minimum salary level of £20,480. We would encourage this to be enacted as soon as possible and would support this as a permanent change following the initial 12-month trial.
  
  
• COVID-19 has accelerated collaboration across the health and care system, helping to meet the unprecedented levels of demand, and as a result. Trusts across the country are continuing to push themselves to do the best for their staff, with innovative and future-facing approaches to workforce planning, management, and deployment. However, a lack of workforce capacity constrains further progress. The only sustainable solution to workforce challenges in the NHS is sufficient focus and investment in staff pay, recruitment (including training) and retention, via a national workforce plan.