Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many NHS apprenticeships have been provided in the West Midlands in each (a) local authority and (b) NHS Trust area in (i) the last year for which figures are available, (ii) 2015 and (iii) 2010; and how many nursing associates have been appointed in the West Midlands in the same areas and in the same years.

Data on the number of Apprenticeships provided by individual Trusts and local authorities across the West Midlands is not collected centrally.

From April 2017, a new apprenticeship levy and public sector apprentice target will come into force. As part of the public sector target, Trusts and other public sector organisations will be required to report annually their number of apprentice starts.

The Nursing Associate role is a new role, with the first 1,000 trainees commencing their training in January 2017; as such data for previous years is not available.

As at January 2017, 95 Nursing Associates have commenced training at Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust.

Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust is an established Nursing Associate Test Pilot Partnership spanning a wide area of Employment Partners across the West Midlands. The test sites are as follows:

- Burton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust;

- Dudley Group of Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust;

- Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust;

- South Staffordshire and Shropshire Healthcare NHS Foundation;

- Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Partnership NHS Trust;

- The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust;

- The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust;

- Dudley Clinical Commissioning Group; and

- Wolverhampton Clinical Commissioning Group.

Further trainees across other Partnerships in the West Midlands below will be recruited for an April 2017 start.

- Birmingham and Solihull Partnership (Heart of England);

- Black Country and Partners (Walsall);

- The Herefordshire and Worcestershire Partnership (Worcestershire);

- Coventry and Warwickshire Nursing Associate Pilot (South Warwickshire); and

- Transforming Care Together (Birmingham).