The REC and APSCo have responded strongly to the government’s health plan with the REC saying it risks misleading public about NHS staffing.
Responding to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) publishing its 10 year health plan, REC Chief Executive Neil Carberry said: “Sustainable approaches to staffing the NHS need in-depth expertise and an understanding of the complex needs of the service, not the politics of the stump. Despite this – and its willingness to use private providers operating outside the NHS to address shortages – the government continues to issue misleading information to people about temporary staffing in the NHS.
“Banks are generally more expensive than on-framework agencies, and we know that good agencies offer better compliance, safety, and cost control than less regulated alternatives,” he said. “Trust leaders know agency needs to be a well-controlled part of the mix – it is time for the government to start dealing in realities. It is misleading for the DHSC to claim that staffing Banks are cheaper than employing agency workers and that the NHS can eliminate deploying agency staff and still reduce backlogs with safe staffing levels. The truth is that high staff turnover has become endemic across the health workforce – this is the result of a broken staffing model that fails to recruit and retain permanent staff, pushing Trusts away from politically disfavoured on-framework agencies and into the arms of pricier off-framework options and staffing Banks.”
Carberry went on to say that banning the use of agency staff by the end of the Parliament was short-sighted and would end up pushing costs up as wards were closed due to short staffing. “Instead of this, we need a sensible partnership that gets the balance right between permanent staff being the backbone of the service and agency and bank staff being there to fill gaps when needed at reasonable rates,” he said. “If private-public partnerships can be achieved elsewhere in the NHS then staffing which is integral to the success of this plan should not be excluded from a similar arrangement.”
Tania Bowers, Global Public Policy Director at APSCo said the proposals did not go far enough to meet the desperately needed skills access demands in the NHS: “While we welcome the Government’s focus on reforming the NHS, what’s still missing is a robust people and resourcing strategy, promised for later in the year,” she said. “The planned reduction in access to overseas talent, including doctors, is disappointing and will only add to the significant resourcing burden that has impacted NHS services. The time it takes to train medical professionals is extensive, so while the domestic skills market is being developed, international resources will remain critical.”
Bowers also expressed disappointment that the plan did not include caveats to help the NHS reform hiring practices longer-term. “APSCo has called on the Government to reconsider its aim of eradicating agency spending entirely across NHS providers and integrated care systems. In our experience, there will always be a need for flexible, agency-sourced staffing to meet the demand for niche expertise, fill skills gaps, and alleviate immediate pressures across different care settings,” she said. “This will be critical to resource the new community health centres as they evolve and to harness game-changing tech. We strongly urge the Government to recognise the value of a blended, flexible workforce in its people and resourcing strategy for the NHS and care systems.”
Bowers said APSCo had written to the Health and Social Care Secretary, Wes Streeting, to highlight the critical importance of flexibility in the NHS workforce: “We will continue to urge the Government to take account of these recommendations,” she said. “We will continue to ensure the voice of our members is being presented at every discussion as the 10-year Plan progresses.”
Neil Carberry added: “We urge the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and the Treasury to convene a one-day summit to take urgent stock of the current approach to staffing, set clear priorities, and commit to a transparent reporting and monitoring of demand and costs of using agency workers. This is the moment to bring structured public-private partnerships to the table, harnessing the innovation and scale of consultancies and tech providers to transform workforce procurement and planning.”
