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Strengthening workforce planning in the health and care bill: coalition principles

See the latest information and briefing on workforce planning in the Health and Care Bill.

A coalition of almost 90 health and care organisations – including the Royal College of Physicians – calling for stronger provisions on workforce planning in the Health and Care Bill has issued a briefing ahead of committee stage in the House of Lords in January 2022.  

You can download a briefing and see the full list of organisations in the coalition at the bottom of the page.  

MPs rejected the amendment tabled by the Rt. Hon. Jeremy Hunt MP to strengthen workforce planning in November 2021 despite cross-party support and backing from the coalition of almost 90 sector organisations. The amendment has now been re-tabled by Baroness Cumberlege, supported by Lord Hunt of King’s Heath, Baroness Brinton and Lord Stevens of Birmingham.  

The coalition of almost 90 health organisations represents service users and patients, doctors, nurses, social care workers, employers and providers in the NHS and the voluntary sector. This broad spectrum of the health and care sector is clear that the data gap on how many staff we need in future must be resolved to put the NHS and care workforce back on sustainable footing.  

The amendment tabled by Baroness Cumberlege to mandate the regular publication of independent assessments of current and future health and care workforce numbers would achieve this, helping to close the data gap and strengthen accountability and transparency on workforce planning. The coalition believes any other amendment or clause tabled for this purpose needs to meet the following principles: 

  1. Assessments must be national to ensure a collective understanding of current and future workforce numbers across health and care. 
  2. Assessments must be independent and laid in a report to parliament. 
  3. Assessments must include projections for staff across health, social care and public health. 
  4. Assessments must include staff numbers as follows: 
    • Numbers of staff at the time of publication. 
    • Numbers in 5, 10 and 20 years’ time based on current trajectory. 
    • Numbers needed in 5, 10 and 20 years’ time based on the projected health and care needs of the population over the same time frames.  
  5. Demand must be modelled on demographic changes among patient population, demographic changes among health and care staff (eg. rise in part-time working),rising role of technology, changes to cost of health care, new and emerging patient pathways and evidence-based treatments and expected rise in certain health conditions. 
  6. Role for NHS and key health and care stakeholders to feed in intel which impact staffing supply and demand requirements. 
  7. Published at regular intervals that are more frequent than every 5 years to enable the system to plan. The coalition recommends the assessments are done every 2 years. 

Who's involved

Organisations

See who's involved
  1. Academy of Medical Royal Colleges
  2. Age UK
  3. Alzheimer’s Society
  4. Association for Palliative Medicine of Great Britain and Ireland
  5. Association of British Clinical Diabetologists
  6. Association of British Neurologists
  7. Association of Cancer Physicians
  8. Asthma UK and British Lung Foundation
  9. Bliss
  10. Blood Cancer UK
  11. Bowel Cancer UK
  12. Brain Tumour Charity
  13. Brain Tumour Research
  14. Brain's Trust
  15. Breast Cancer Now
  16. British and Irish Association of Stroke Physicians
  17. British Association of Dermatologists
  18. British Association of Sexual Health & HIV
  19. British Cardiovascular Society
  20. British Heart Foundation
  21. British Medical Association (BMA)
  22. British Nuclear Medicine Society
  23. British Pharmacological Society
  24. British Society for Haematology
  25. British Society for Rheumatology
  26. British Thoracic Society
  27. Cancer Awareness for Teens & Twenties
  28. Cancer Black Care
  29. Cancer Research UK
  30. Cancer52
  31. Centre for Mental Health
  32. Children with Cancer UK
  33. Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group
  34. Clinical Genetics Society
  35. CLL Support
  36. Crohn's & Colitis UK
  37. Diabetes UK
  38. Faculty of Dental Surgery
  39. Faculty of Physician Associates
  40. Faculty of Public Health
  41. Faculty of Sexual & Reproductive Healthcare
  42. Faculty of Sport and Exercise Medicine
  43. Grace Kelly Childhood Cancer Trust
  44. Health Foundation
  45. Independent Age
  46. Intensive Care Society
  47. Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust
  48. Kidney Cancer Support Network
  49. Kidney Cancer UK
  50. Macmillan Cancer Support
  51. Medical Schools Council
  52. Mencap
  53. Mental Health Foundation
  54. Mesothelioma UK
  55. Mind
  56. Myeloma UK
  57. National Voices
  58. NHS Confederation
  59. NHS Providers
  60. Nuffield Trust
  61. One Cancer Voice
  62. Ovacome
  63. Ovarian Cancer Action
  64. Pancreatic Cancer UK
  65. Parkinson's UK
  66. Prostate Cancer UK
  67. Rethink Mental Illness
  68. Royal College of Anaesthetists
  69. Royal College of Emergency Medicine
  70. Royal College of General Practitioners
  71. Royal College of Midwifery
  72. Royal College of Nursing
  73. Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists
  74. Royal College of Ophthalmologists
  75. Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health
  76. Royal College of Pathologists
  77. Royal College of Physicians
  78. Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow
  79. Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh
  80. Royal College of Psychiatrists
  81. Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh
  82. Royal College of Surgeons in England
  83. Sarcoma UK
  84. Society for Acute Medicine
  85. Society for Endocrinology
  86. Solving Kids Cancer
  87. Stroke Association
  88. Sue Ryder
  89. Target Ovarian Cancer
  90. Teenage Cancer Trust
  91. The King's Fund
  92. The Richmond Group
  93. UK Kidney Association
  94. UNISON
  95. Young Lives vs Cancer
  96. Young Minds