Maternity Services: Resignations
(asked on 5th January 2024) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment her Department has made of the prevalence of reasons other than retirement for maternity staff leaving NHS employment.
Answered by
Maria Caulfield
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
NHS England collects information based on a broad ‘reason for leaving’ data field in the Electronic Staff Record (ESR), linked to staff recorded as leaving active service. ESR is the payroll system for the National Health Service; information from it is held by NHS Digital and is based upon the National Workforce Data Set, which allows for the capture of nationally consistent information about the healthcare workforce for the purposes of monitoring and workforce planning.
The following table shows midwife leavers from the NHS and Reason for Leaving in NHS trusts and other Core Organisations in England between 31 March 2022 and 2023:
Reasons for Leaving | Number of midwives |
Bank Staff not fulfilled minimum work requirement | 2 |
Death in Service | 14 |
Dismissal - Capability | 21 |
Dismissal - Conduct | 4 |
Dismissal - Some Other Substantial Reason | 10 |
Dismissal - Statutory Reason | 0 |
Employee Transfer | 3 |
End of Fixed Term Contract | 17 |
End of Fixed Term Contract - Completion of Training Scheme | 1 |
End of Fixed Term Contract - End of Work Requirement | 0 |
End of Fixed Term Contract - Other | 2 |
Flexi Retirement | 12 |
Has Not Worked | 0 |
Mutually Agreed Resignation - Local Scheme with Repayment | 0 |
Mutually Agreed Resignation - National Scheme with Repayment | 0 |
Pregnancy | 0 |
Redundancy - Compulsory | 0 |
Redundancy - Voluntary | 1 |
Retirement - Ill Health | 17 |
Retirement Age | 389 |
Voluntary Early Retirement - no Actuarial Reduction | 28 |
Voluntary Early Retirement - with Actuarial Reduction | 11 |
Voluntary Resignation - Adult Dependants | 7 |
Voluntary Resignation - Better Reward Package | 15 |
Voluntary Resignation - Child Dependants | 28 |
Voluntary Resignation - Health | 68 |
Voluntary Resignation - Incompatible Working Relationships | 11 |
Voluntary Resignation - Lack of Opportunities | 11 |
Voluntary Resignation - Other/Not Known | 213 |
Voluntary Resignation - Promotion | 62 |
Voluntary Resignation - Relocation | 205 |
Voluntary Resignation - To undertake further education or training | 32 |
Voluntary Resignation - Work Life Balance | 323 |
Unknown | 1,573 |
Midwife Total | 3,080 |
Source: NHS England
Note: Robust assessment of drivers in reasons for leaving is difficult from the data due to the high number of staff who have an unknown classification.