NHS staff vacancies rise nearly 10% in three months amid unfolding ‘national emergency’, report shows

Sign up for our free Health Check email to receive exclusive analysis on the week in health

Get our free Health Check email

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice

Staff vacancies in the NHS have increased nearly 10 per cent in just three months, as experts warned of an unfolding “national emergency” with nearly 108,000 jobs unfilled.

Official data from the first three months of 2018/19 released by watchdog NHS Improvement have laid bare the parlous state of the NHS with winter just months away.

Vacancies rose by 9,268, from 98,475 in March 2018 to 107,743 in June, meaning one role in 11 is vacant. This is despite national and international recruitment campaigns to attract key health workers.

Experts said issues have been made worse by a “botched Brexit” and government immigration policies which mean health workers have no certainty over visas and UK-trained doctors have had their careers put in jeopardy.

Siva Anandaciva, chief analyst at the King’s Fund think tank, said the figures show the NHS is heading for another “tough winter”, adding: “Widespread and growing nursing shortages now risk becoming a national emergency and are symptomatic of a long-term failure in workforce planning, which has been exacerbated by the impact of Brexit and short-sighted immigration policies.”

There were 11,576 vacant doctors posts and 41,722 unfilled nursing jobs in English trusts – with the biggest nursing gaps (14.8 per cent of posts) in London where cost of living makes recruitment even harder.

The number of nursing vacancies rose by 5,928 (17 per cent) in three months and the Royal College of Nursing said the government should immediately investigate the sudden rise.

Record demand for hospital and emergency services is part of the problem, with 1.14 million people admitted to NHS hospitals between March and June, up 22,200 patients a month on the same period in 2017.

Waiting lists are at their highest levels in more than a decade and the number of patients waiting over a year for treatment more than doubled – from 1,475 in 2017 to 3,402.

Ian Dalton, chief executive of NHS Improvement, said staff are working “extremely hard”, adding: “We are helping trusts ensure that no one stays in hospital longer than they need to, so that beds are free for other patients who urgently need them.”

But spiralling demand and overspending on temporary staff to plug vacancies has added to a deficit – the gap between spending and funding in the budget – across all NHS hospital, ambulance, community and mental health trusts of £4.3bn.

This is the first time NHS Improvement has published the scale of overspending, and it shows how nearly a decade of austerity has meant the health service’s £114bn budget has failed to keep pace with what it is asked to deliver.

Typically this shortfall has been made up with one-off measures like land sales and emergency funding, as was announced this month for A&E departments, and reflect how budgets set by ministers at the start of the year bear no relation to reality.

Labour said the findings were “devastating” and highlighted that Theresa May’s flagship pledge to increase the budget by 3.7 per cent a year from 2019, up to an extra £20bn a year by 2023, will not help shore up services ahead of winter.

Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, said: “On all key performance measures the NHS is struggling to keep up with demand ... With hospitals in such deep financial crisis there are real concerns about how the NHS will cope this winter.

“Yet again we see that the overwhelming pressure on NHS staff and services has been caused by the austerity budgets imposed from Downing Street.”

Health economists said the NHS in England is developing a “10-year plan” for how it will invest the “modest” new funding pledged by the prime minister, but argue that these figures show how heroic the effort has been to stay afloat.

“Today’s figures are a reminder that we are starting underwater – and the first priority will have to be simply getting back to a firm footing,” Sally Gainsbury, senior analyst at the Nuffield Trust said.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: “Despite 22,000 more emergency admissions a month than this time last year, hard-working staff have continued to provide world-class care.

“To support their efforts we’re training 25 per cent more doctors, nurses and midwives, giving a significant pay rise to over a million staff, and investing in the future of the NHS, so that by 2023/24 it will receive £20.5bn a year more than it does now.”