Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to recruit increased numbers of specialist staff to provide (a) bladder and bowel continence and (b) stoma care.

National Health Service employers are responsible for determining and recruiting the number of specialist staff that they require to meet their local workforce and service needs. NHS employers also have a responsibility to ensure their workforces have the mandatory training required to undertake their roles. The approach taken for post-registration for bladder, bowel, urology and stoma care will differ in each locality depending on service, profession and workforce supply need and as such is generally commissioned by NHS employers.

Health Education England (HEE) is responsible for ensuring that there are training models in place nationally to support and develop post-registration specialty training pipelines. HEE develops, and funds a wide range of national training platforms, programmes and initiatives for cross-profession specialist workforce training.