Lord Willis of Knaresborough

As of September 2024, there were 6,161 full time equivalent nursing associates employed across National Health Service trusts and integrated care boards in England. This is 424, or 7.4%, more than a year previously.

Training and retaining talented NHS staff is absolutely central to our mission of rebuilding a health service that is fit for the future. Our 10-Year Health Plan to reform the NHS will establish how to train and provide the staff the NHS needs, including nurses, to care for patients across our communities. The refreshed Long Term Workforce Plan will deliver the transformed health service we will build over the next decade, and will ensure that the NHS has the right people, including nursing associates, in the right places, with the right skills to deliver the care patients need when they need it.

NHS England does not hold this information centrally. Nursing associates are one of a number of roles through which Primary Care Networks (PCNs) can claim reimbursement for salaries, and some on costs, through the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme. These roles provide appointments and perform clinical and administrative tasks as part of the wider general practice multi-disciplinary team. Staff recruited under the scheme are employed at a PCN level.

Suggested reply

As of September 2024, there are 6,161 full time equivalent nursing associates employed across National Health Service trust and integrated care boards in England, and a further 1,167 in general practice organisations and primary care networks.

The following table shows the number of NHS trust and other core organisations, like integrated care boards and their predecessors, who had one or more nursing associates join the organisation over a 12-month period ending in September, each year from 2018 to 2024:

Source: NHS England’s NHS Hospital and Community Health Service Workforce Statistics.

Notes:

1. this data relates to the workforce directly employed in NHS trusts and other core organisations who are paid;
2. the data is based on a headcount and includes people returning to active service, like those returning from maternity leave or career break;
3. the data is calculated on an annual basis for each annual period in this analysis; and
4. the following two trusts are not in all time periods for turnover as they have not used the data source, the Electronic Staff Record (ESR), for all the years in this time series, and they are therefore included from the point at which a full year of data from ESR could be compared, as: Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (RP6) began using ESR in November 2018, and so is included in turnover data from the September 2019 to September 2020 period onwards; and the Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (RFS) began using ESR in March 2021, and so is included in the turnover data from the September 2021 to September 2022 period onwards.

Nursing associates joining a body could be staff moving from another staff group or level of employment in the same organisation, likely moving from being a trainee nursing associate to being fully qualified, they could be newly employed within an organisation, having already undertaken nursing associate roles or training elsewhere, or they could be returning from unpaid breaks in service such as maternity leave or career breaks. The data is not available to assess nursing associate joiners in other NHS funded organisations, such as in general practices and primary care networks.

We have a complete apprentice pathway for nursing, from entry level to postgraduate advanced clinical practice. Nursing associates can go on to become registered nurses through a degree apprenticeship, allowing people to earn a salary while gaining a nursing qualification.

Nursing associates can also become registered nurses by completing a shortened undergraduate nursing degree. For those taking this route, the NHS Learning Support Fund provides eligible students with a non-repayable training grant of a minimum of £5,000 per academic year. The Government keeps the funding arrangements for all healthcare students under close review. The Government attempts to strike a balance between ensuring students are financially supported during their studies and delivering maximum value for money for the taxpayer.

Training and retaining talented National Health Service staff is absolutely central to our mission of rebuilding a health service that is fit for the future. Our 10-Year Health Plan to reform the NHS will establish how to train and provide the staff the NHS needs, including nurses, to care for patients across our communities. This summer we will also publish a refreshed Long Term Workforce Plan to deliver the transformed health service we will build over the next decade.

The Department does not hold the information requested. As the independent regulator of nurses and midwives in the United Kingdom, and nursing associates in England, the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) is responsible for nurse registration. The NMC publishes the number of UK trained nursing associates joining its register for the first time in England, which will be a close proxy for the number completing training. Skills for Care data shows that in 2023/24, there were 700 nursing associates in adult social care, a decrease of 50 from 2022/23.

The following table shows the number of UK trained nursing associates joining the NMC register in England for the first time, each financial year from 2018/19 to 2023/24:

Source: Nursing and Midwifery Council, March 2024 Annual Data Report