The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 278 No 7445 p358
31 March 2007

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Plan the NHS workforce, MPs tell the DoH

Workforce planning must become a priority for the health service, the House of Commons Health Committee says in a report that calls the Government's approach “a disastrous failure”.

The committee concludes that the NHS has gone from boom to bust with a period of dramatic recruitment and pay rises now being followed by widespread job cuts, sweeping training cuts and severe pay restrictions as a result of NHS organisations recruiting more staff than they could afford to pay.

The committee criticises a lack of integration between financial and workforce planning. “The expansion of the workforce was reckless and uncontrolled and increases in funding were often seen as a blank cheque for recruiting new staff,” it says.

The committee also criticises pay rises for medical consultants, saying: “Large pay increases were granted without adequate steps being taken to ensure increases in productivity in return.”

Recommendations made by the committee include:

• End constant reorganisation of workforce planning

• Improve integration between workforce and financial planning

• Improve productivity

• Stop considering staff groups separately

Responding to the report, Sian Thomas, deputy director of NHS Employers, said: “Workforce planning has always been a huge challenge in health care. It isn’t an exact science and the time it takes to train a health care professional means that the way services are provided may have changed in the meantime.”