Following the national pause on the use of synthetic mesh to treat stress urinary incontinence (SUI) or urogynaecological prolapse, we are now writing to confirm the pause and period of high restriction is being extended.

Ambulance trusts are now required to purchase all new ambulances in line with the newly-published standard ambulance vehicle specification, ensuring your fleet is safe and effective for patients and staff, and provides good value for money.

From this year onwards, we will no longer send you reminders about completing your self-certification activities, so please build all self-certification activities and deadlines into your calendars. We have published templates and guidance to help you with this (please note these are for your benefit only, there is no need to return these to us).

Last week we published ‘NHS England and NHS Improvement funding and resource 2019/20: supporting the NHS Long Term Plan’  which sets out the funding pledges and support that will be provided to help the NHS deliver on the priorities outlined in the NHS Long Term Plan.

It describes how funding, people and resources will be distributed to transform local health and care systems.

The NHS Assembly has been created to advise our Boards on achieving the aims of the NHS Long Term Plan.

The Assembly builds on the collaborative approach to developing the plan. Its members include national and frontline clinical leaders, patients and carers, staff representatives, health and care system leaders and the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector.

Practising or training doctors, nurses and other health professionals are members to ensure the needs and priorities of the NHS workforce are well represented.

Your 2017/18 reference cost benchmarking tool and associated guidance have now been published on your trust planning portal.

The benchmarking tool has been produced using the latest reference cost data, and highlights areas where you might have financial efficiency opportunities. It will also allow you to evaluate trust reference costs to improve costing in future collections.

As of Monday 1 April, you will now be assessed on your compliance with the recommendations in the developing workforce safeguards publication.

This publication:

• provides a set of recommendations on reporting and governance approaches to workforce planning

• sets out our requirement to assess all providers on compliance (via the Single Oversight Framework and the Annual Governance Statement)

• shares good practice approaches to decision-making on workforce set against safe staffing guidelines

There will be no change to the current NHS optical voucher values or hospital eye service maximum charge. Both will remain at the same level as 2017/18.

We’ve published our annual gender pay gap report detailing the difference in average pay between male and female employees as of 31 March 2018, and the actions we are taking to address and close the gap such as the active gender pay group.

The University of York is conducting a survey on behalf of NHS Employers to find out more about issues such as pay gaps, the effectiveness of staff networks, the inclusion of minority groups, and discrimination in the NHS.

Please share your views and encourage staff of all grades in your organisation to do the same.

NIHR has developed an online awareness tool, guidance and case studies to help you signpost newly diagnosed patients and enable dementia patients to participate in dementia research.

Join Dementia Research (JDR) is a campaign that sets out to meet the dementia 2020 challenge objectives:

• ensuring all staff can signpost patients to participate in research

• 25% of people with dementia are registered with JDR by 2020

• Provider bulletin: 27 March 2019