The RCP has submitted a response to the government’s consultation on the 10 Year Workforce Plan for England calling for investment in the medical workforce, an expansion of specialty training places and stronger measures on retention.
In September, the government launched a six week consultation on its promised 10 Year Workforce Plan to deliver its 10 Year Health Plan. This followed more than 70 health and care organisations joining the RCP and NHS Providers to call for productive engagement on the plan.
The RCP believes that a regularly refreshed dedicated workforce strategy, with independently verified modelling of medical staff, is the right approach to ensure population needs are met. Its submission calls for investment in the medical workforce, an expansion of medical specialty training posts and projections of the numbers of posts needed to meet population demand.
The RCP is a strong supporter of a long-term approach to workforce planning. Historic short term decision making is evident in the staffing crisis we see today, where demand is growing, our workforce is burnt out and demoralised, and yet despite those challenges, early career doctors are left without an NHS training post.
The RCP’s submission calls for government to:
- invest in the medical workforce to deliver excellent patient care in the NHS.
engage effectively with doctors and royal colleges on the development of the 10YWP by testing the ideas and assumptions that underpin it. - develop and publish a 10YWP implementation plan that actively involves the NHS workforce.
- maintain the commitment to grow the domestic medical workforce through an expansion of medical school places, using the 10YWP to set out a feasible plan and timetable for delivery.
- set out independently verified modelling of the workforce numbers we need to meet population need and address health inequalities, including projections of training places for the medical specialties.
- expand the number of medical specialty training places to meet population demand – the 1,000 specialty places promised in the 10 Year Health Plan (10YHP) must be the start of a bigger expansion.
- commit to reforming postgraduate medical training and set out plans for addressing competition ratios to fair and sustainable levels.
- maintain the commitments made to regularly refresh the 2023 LTWP, so the 10YWP is refreshed every two years, or aligned with a fiscal event.
- accept the NAO’s recommendations on the 2023 LTWP and provide clarity on how those NAO recommendations are informing the development of the 10YWP.
- deliver a plan to support educators, supervisors, mentors and trainers by working with employers in the NHS to increase capacity for medical education and training.
- recognise that AI and technology alone will not solve the problem of capacity in the health system.
- provide the necessary funding to deliver the priorities that the plan sets.
- limit the pace and scale of the roll out of the physician assistant (PA) role as laid out in the 2023 LTWP, reviewing and revising the projections for the role.
Now that government intends to publish the plan in spring 2026, the RCP is calling for the additional time to result in further proactive engagement with NHS staff and the medical workforce in England to test ideas and assumptions. The medical profession’s confidence in the 2023 NHS England Long Term Workforce Plan was harmed by a lack of proactive engagement on it and lack of any accompanying implementation document. The development of the 10YWP must address this to avoid repeating the same mistake. It is critical that government proactively involves the medical profession in the development of the plan and produces an implementation document.