Nurses: Vacancies
(asked on 26th June 2019) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the vacancy rate is for nurses in (a) the NHS and (b) social care.
Since April 2017, NHS Improvement collects vacancy rates of medical staff from individual National Health Service providers and publish them as part of its ‘Quarterly performance of the NHS provider sector’ report. The vacancy data is published for three staff groups; doctors, nurses and ‘other staff’. The report can be found in the following link:
The latest available data as at March 2019, shows there are over 39,500 nursing and midwifery vacancies across the NHS. This is a vacancy rate of 11.1%. There are 40,300 nursing and midwifery temporary staff (bank and agency) who are used to fill in these vacancies as well as short and long-term sickness absence and maternity leave.
Skills for Care estimates that in 2017/18, there are over 4,400 vacant registered nursing jobs in social care. This is a vacancy rate of 12.3%.
The interim people Plan, which was published on 3 June 2019, sets out a shared vision and plan of action to put NHS people at the heart of NHS policy and delivery and ensure the NHS has the staff it needs.