Recommendation 2

We remain very concerned about the critical shortages across the NHS workforce and the Department’s repeated delays in publishing a strategy to address them. Workforce shortages are widespread across the NHS, and particularly acute in some specialisms, for example midwifery. This can result in unsafe care for patients. This is a long-standing issue which pre-dates the pandemic and which has continued to worsen: NHS vacancy rates increased from 8.3% in December 2021 to 9.7% by June 2022. The NHS Long Term Plan committed to producing a Workforce Implementation plan by late 2019, and in September 2020 the Department told us that it expected to publish it following the 2020 Spending Review. It still has not done so. The Department’s ongoing failure to publish the workforce plan is extremely disappointing. It is unclear how ICSs are supposed to plan for workforce shortages when the Department has not published a national plan, or the analysis underpinning it. We are encouraged that, not long after our evidence session, the Department committed to publishing a full NHS workforce plan during 2023, and we hope it is finally able to meet its own deadline. 6 Introducing Integrated Care Systems Recommendation: The Department should make good on its commitment to publish a comprehensive NHS workforce plan and the forecasts underpinning it in