Dear Colleague,

Thank you again for your time and engagement at the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan (LTWP) delivery summit on Thursday 9 of November at the Kia Oval. The plan is a historic moment for the NHS in England and honours the extraordinary dedication, skill and compassion of NHS staff who have been the backbone of the health service for 75 years.

Work in healthcare will be dramatically different in future and it will not be easy to meet the challenges presented by an ageing population, changing burden of disease and growing demand. The discussions that took place at the summit, however, highlighted the opportunities we have to build on the actions in the LTWP and put the NHS workforce on a sustainable footing for the long term.

The goal of the LTWP is to achieve the best possible outcomes for patients. This means growing the workforce to provide more and better care. Over the lifetime of the plan, we will train nearly 500,000 new professionals and keep 130,000 colleagues who would otherwise have left the NHS, working. We will reform undergraduate education, expand and embed new roles, and promote new routes into NHS work, including a hugely ambitious apprenticeship programme.

The summit was an opportunity to hear what is already working and where we need to work together as a delivery coalition to train, retain and reform the workforce we need now and in the future. We cannot deliver the whole plan alone; the insights you have shared with us will inform the next steps we take together.

We have committed to an ongoing process of engagement involving all the partners represented at the summit. Over the coming months we will be holding three deliberative engagements, one on each of the three core ambitions of the LTWP: train, retain and reform. These will be an opportunity to further explore delivery, and to make sure we are all moving forward together. Please let us know which deliberative event you’d prefer to be involved in by contacting us via workforce.bso@nhs.net and state your preference for train, retain, or reform.

We have committed to refreshing the LTWP at least every two years. In the meantime, we will review our progress continually, including at a further gathering next summer, that will mark the one-year anniversary of the plan.

I am also keen to receive your feedback on the delivery summit and anything that we should continue or do differently in preparation for the next event. Do get in touch with me directly or via nhs.stakeholderengagement@nhs.net if you have any comments about how the day went.

We will also establish a regular LTWP partnership newsletter that I trust you are happy to receive. If, however, you would prefer not to receive please do respond and ask to be removed from the mailing list.

Thank you again for your involvement and commitment to delivering the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan.