NHS workforce plan must ensure GP numbers rise at faster rate, say experts
The ‘refreshed’ NHS workforce plan needs to make sure GP numbers rise at a faster rate than other parts of the workforce, experts have said.
Analysis from the Health Foundation think tank argued that the plan, which is expected to be published within weeks, should both increase GP training numbers and ‘reverse the trend in poor GP retention’, as ‘central priorities’.
The new strategy was announced in 2024, when then health secretary Wes Streeting said the Government would rework the current NHS workforce strategy, published in 2023, and committed to publishing a refreshed NHS workforce plan.
According to the 10-year plan for the NHS, this workforce strategy will include ‘fewer staff than projected’ by 2035.
A draft of the new workforce plan seen by the Financial Times argues that treating more patients ‘in local clinics or at home rather than hospital and using technology better’ will mean the NHS ‘does not need anything like the growth rate [in staff numbers]’ set out in its 2023 workforce plan.
The 2023 plan had projected a 4% increase of fully-qualified GPs by 2036/37, compared to a 49% increase in hospital consultants, and the current Labour Government has since rejected its aim to increase NHS headcount by 60% by 2037 as unworkable.
The draft seen by the Financial Times said ‘that up to 49,000 more GPs might be needed by 2035, 23% more than in the 2023 plan, at the expense of those working in hospitals’.
The Health Foundation’s analysis argued that to shift more care into the community, as pledged by the Government, the plan needs to make sure GP numbers rise at a faster rate than other parts of the NHS workforce.
It said: ‘Over the past decade, the number of specialist clinicians has grown substantially, while GP numbers have remained relatively flat and have not kept up with population growth.
‘This risks compromising the system’s ability to deliver the continuous, preventative and community-based care that the 10-Year Health Plan’s shifts depend on. Recruiting and retaining more GPs should therefore be a central priority of the workforce plan.’
The plan will also need to do more than continue the existing policy of increasing GP trainees, and address longstanding issues with GP retention.
It added: ‘It will need to address how to retain existing GPs, with a particular focus on women, who now represent 58% of all GPs, and international medical graduates, who now represent around half of all GP trainees, but are more likely to face a range of additional challenges finding roles compared with UK-trained doctors.’
Pulse has contacted the Department of Health and Social Care for comment.
The refreshed plan was initially meant to be published last summer, but had since been delayed to Spring this year, with the Government launching a call for evidence at the end of last year.
The Government previously said that it will end the NHS’ ‘dependency on international recruitment’ by capping new overseas recruit numbers at 10% by 2035 to create a more ‘sustainable’ workforce.
In 2023, Pulse’s award-winning investigation looked at the long-term workforce plan in full to understand whether it would solve any issues in general practice.
READERS' COMMENTS [5]
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This makes a very disappointing reading. The Health Foundation’s call for a significant further increase in GP numbers, at the expense of hospital consultants, reflects a worrying disconnect from the current reality on the ground in UK general practice.
While it is true that shifting more care into the community requires a strong primary care workforce, simply flooding the system with more GPs is not the solution. In many areas, particularly in England, GP work is already drying up. Newly qualified GPs and those returning from maternity leave or training are increasingly struggling to find substantive, secure posts. Many are being forced into precarious sessional or locum work with little continuity, or are even unable to find regular sessions at all. This is not a theoretical future problem, as it is happening now.
The greatest strength of general practice lies in clinical experience — seeing large numbers of patients with a wide variety of presentations. Diluting the workload across an ever-larger number of GPs risks reducing individual clinical exposure, deskilling the profession, and ultimately lowering the quality of care. A GP who sees fewer patients becomes less sharp, not more. We should be prioritising depth of experience over headline workforce numbers.
Furthermore, the aggressive expansion of Physician Associates, many of whom were encouraged into the role by similar workforce planning rhetoric, has already created significant problems. We now have associate physicians who are jobless or under-employed, despite the heavy investment in their training. Repeating the same mistake with GPs would be irresponsible.
Instead of fixating on ever-higher recruitment targets, the refreshed NHS workforce plan must focus on three far more important priorities: Quality of Training, Certainty of Career Progression, Fair Remuneration and Retention.
Recruiting and training more doctors is relatively easy. Ensuring they have meaningful, well-supported, and properly rewarded careers is much harder, but far more important. The NHS needs fewer, better-trained, better-supported, and better-paid GPs who can actually practise medicine to a high standard, not an inflated headcount that risks undermining the very service it claims to protect.
The focus should be on sustainability and quality, not just raw numbers.
Perhaps if GPs did not have to waste so much time on nonsense?
Perhaps if GP finance incentivised useful activity?
Then the current numbers might be sufficient,?
The workforce plan is not for the workforce but we arrogantly assume it is. Its who and what is the best way to look after people over next twenty years especially as our population ages. I read little about our patients need in Pulse when reality is corridor care and rising admissions with poor elderly preventive care. We need staff of different skills and a team approach…btw PAs were only ever projected to reach one tenth of the planned large increase in doctors but the BMA residents propaganda needs a scapegoat- it’ll be our nurses next.
Theres NO jobs in primary care
There are NO jobs in primary care at present. There are GP’s without jobs at the moment.