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The government has decided to refresh the NHS workforce plan, prioritising on shifting care from hospitals and into the community. The revised plan, expected to be unveiled in the summer 2025, aims to ensure the workforce is used effectively to support the delivery of the upcoming 10-Year Health Plan. Health secretary Wes Streeting explained the need to revise the plan citing Lord Darzi's report, which highlighted the dire state of the NHS, including that "too many people end up in hospital because there aren't the resources in the community to reach patients earlier." "Our 10 Year Health Plan will deliver 3 big shifts in the focus of healthcare: from hospital to community, analogue to digital, and sickness to prevention. "We will refresh the NHS workforce plan to fit the transformed health service we will build over the next decade, so the NHS has the staff it needs to treat patients on time again," Streeting said.

As the countdown to the next UK election begins, the King's Fund has identified three priorities to improve public health. The national action would be taken by the future government to fix the "NHS and social care" in the country. The health policy think tank said it would prioritise "improving access to out-of-hospital care", making "careers in health and social care" more attractive and tackling the biggest risk factors affecting people's health. It highlighted that workforce crisis is one of the biggest challenges faced by the National Health Service (NHS) and social care services in England while citing "years of poor planning and fragmented responsibilities" as the reason for widespread staff shortages. As per the King's Fund's data, there were more than 125,000 vacancies across the NHS workforce in England in October 2023, not including primary care vacancies such as GPs, and 152,000 vacant posts in the adult social care workforce.

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) Director for Scotland Clare Morrison participated in the panel discussion alongside representatives from other health professional organisations on tackling the workforce crisis at the SNP conference in Aberdeen on 8 October. At the conference, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care committed to achieving protected learning time for health professionals. Morrison welcomed the Cabinet Secretary's statement as fantastic news for pharmacists across Scotland. "RPS Scotland will follow up the discussion by writing to the Cabinet Secretary to request a meeting to discuss achieving protected learning time, the forthcoming results of our workforce wellbeing survey, and positive examples of how pharmacy teams have improved the well-being of their teams," said the society.

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is calling for scrapping unfair benefit rules for migrant nursing staff, warning that these policies risk triggering a mass exodus from the UK's healthcare workforce. A recent RCN report indicated that two-thirds of internationally educated nursing staff are considering leaving the UK and returning to their country of training due to the high cost of living. The report, which is based on survey responses from more than 3,000 international nursing staff, also revealed that those from overseas are "twice as likely as domestic colleagues to report being in financial difficulty" and are "almost three times as likely as UK counterparts to withdraw from their pension due to the cost of living." It also highlighted the impact of the 'no recourse to public funds' (NRPF) rule, which prevents migrants on temporary visas, such as the Health and Care Worker visa, from accessing essential benefits. In response to this report, the union has urged the government to immediately end these restrictive rules and reduce visa fees, including Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) application costs.

National pharmacy bodies have welcomed two VAT changes related to community pharmacy services announced in the Spring budget on Wednesday (15 March) but were disappointed that the budget brought no further relief for the sector in a crippling funding crisis. It was announced that from 1 May 2023, VAT exemption on healthcare would be extended to include medical services carried out by staff directly supervised by registered pharmacists. The government will also extend zero rate on prescriptions to medicines supplied through Patient Group Directions. This measure will be introduced in autumn 2023. HM Treasury said these measures were being introduced to ensure that the VAT system keeps up with changes to how the NHS operates and how healthcare is delivered across the country. More widely, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt promised to halve inflation and said that the NHS would soon publish its long-term workforce plan.

The English health secretary has fumbled the opportunity to prevent a crisis in the NHS this winter. She either does not understand or value the role of community pharmacy as the third pillar of patient access to essential healthcare. Her announcement that she wants community pharmacy to provide more services to take the strain off A&E departments and GP surgeries comes on the same day DHSC announces no new long-term investment to sustain the sector. Does she not understand that as a result of years of government underinvestment in England the network is in decline with random closures across the country? Too many pharmacies are temporarily closed every day due to workforce shortages beyond the control of pharmacy owners. Adding a new service here and there, even with some additional funding, does not address the longer term viability of the network which needs to know which patient services it will be expected to provide over the next 10 years - not just the next few months - and how those will be adequately remunerated. Asking more from our sector with no new investment is a strategy which is bound to fail. The pharmacy contract remains economically illiterate. The sector's finances need open heart surgery not a couple of paracetamol tablets.

Layla Moran, Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, has been elected unopposed as the new Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee in the new Parliament. The announcement was made by the Speaker in the House of Commons on Monday 9 September. Moran, who has been serving as an MP since June 2017, also holds the roles of Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Foreign Affairs and International Development, as well as Science, Innovation, and Technology. Taking on her new role, Moran expressed her enthusiasm, stating, "I am delighted to be taking on the role of Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, to constructively challenge Ministers and the Department to deliver. She highlighted the urgency of tackling the growing challenges within health and social care, including long waiting lists, workforce shortages, and delays in care plans for the elderly.