Classification: Official 
Publication reference: PRN01491

To:

• NHS trust and foundation trust:
  • chief people officers/HR directors
  • chief medical officers/medical directors
  • chief nurses/directors of nursing
• integrated care board:
  • chief people officers/HR directors
  • chief medical officers/medical directors
  • chief nurses/directors of nursing 

cc. 

• NHS trust and foundation trust:
  • chief executive officers
  • chairs
  • chief financial officers/finance directors
• integrated care board:
  • chief executive officers
  • chairs
  • chief financial officers/finance directors
• regional directors of workforce
• regional chief nurses
• regional medical directors
• postgraduate deans

Dear colleagues,

Statutory and mandatory training (StatMand) programme

Following our letter on 25 April regarding Improving working lives, we are writing to give you an update on the StatMand programme and an outline of what we are currently doing, and what action we need you to take over the coming months.

As a reminder, NHS England is leading work to optimise, rationalise and redesign statutory and mandatory training to improve staff experience, deliver better outcomes and reduce the time burden.

This was set out in our 2024/25 priorities and operational planning guidance and reinforced in Improving working lives for doctors in training. Find the full details of the programme on the NHS Learning Hub.

Progress so far – optimise

We’d like to thank you for your engagement with the programme so far. We are pleased to report that 100% of NHS organisations have completed the alignment survey, with 89% declaring alignment to the core skills training framework, and 76% using the NHS England e-learning for healthcare (elfh) content. All reasons for non-alignment and non-utilisation have been gathered and are informing the redesign work.

Together, these standardise what training is delivered and how. This is vital for the planned rollout of the digital staff passport, which will enable our people to move seamlessly between organisations without the need to repeat training. We forecast these actions will reduce the time burden on staff by up to 100,000 days each year* with no material risk, with particular benefit to resident doctors (postgraduate doctors in training).

*Across the NHS in England, approximately 250,000 people go through new starter processes each year, and approximately 50% of these are or were employed by another NHS organisation. With statutory and mandatory training taking an average of 1 day to complete, the estimated saving of 100,000 days is considered conservative.

Rationalise

Having reviewed the refresher periods, staff groups and roles, 3 things stand out and while we will take actions nationally to support you, we are asking that you act locally to support this rationalisation stage of the programme.

1. Governance at a national and local level

There is too much emphasis on compliance of training completion, and not enough on whether it improves outcomes, together with limited governance as to how subjects become deemed as statutory or mandatory. To address this:

NHS England has:

Formed a StatMand Reform Board that will report to NHS England’s Workforce, Training and Education committee and respective boards, and is in the process of appointing subject matter experts who will work closely with subject matter experts at regional, system and local level to establish strong evidential links between the investment of staff time and desired outcomes.

Only training that is determined to be an effective intervention by the Board (against set criteria), with a clear return on investment, will be included in the redesigned national mandatory training framework due to launch in 2025.

NHS employers should:

Establish a similar multidisciplinary committee – if they don’t have one – to oversee the outcomes for all nationally mandated training by 31 January 2025. The committee should also review requests from local subject matter experts for any training to be mandated locally (often called essential training). Access a template terms of reference for these committees on the NHS Learning Hub, along with case studies from those that already have committees in place.

2. Frequencies

Work undertaken by NHS England shows a range of refresher training frequencies in operation. Of these, a large number are operating more frequently than the national guidance, and this may be leading to up to 100,000 days of over-training.

NHS employers should:

Review the frequency of their refresher training against the national guidance (access frequency charts on the NHS Learning Hub) by 31 March 2025. If you are training more frequently than the national guidance, you should use the new committee arrangements to ask subject matter experts to present their justifications for doing so and reduce frequency, where deemed safe to do so.

Where organisations currently train less frequently than the national guidance, we are asking for evidence to be sent to england.statmand@nhs.net. This will build the evidence base for whether lesser frequencies could be safely adopted more widely in the redesigned framework. As an example, a large teaching trust operates 2-yearly level 2 resuscitation training and despite being less frequent than national guidance, they remain one of the highest performing trusts for their cardiac arrest audit.

3. Staff groups and roles

NHS England, working with our stakeholder engagement group, has identified examples of staff groups or roles being required to complete training when it is either not relevant or has limited benefit.

NHS employers should:

Review the current staff groups and roles requiring StatMand training by subject at its new multidisciplinary committee by 30 June 2025 and, going forward, each time it receives training needs analysis recommendations from subject matter experts. For some roles, training should be optional rather than mandatory.

NHS England is undertaking further work to support the redesign of StatMand training as set out in Appendix A, and a further update will be provided at the end of the year.

If you have any questions or would like to share details of any work you have done in your organisation, please email england.statmand@nhs.net.

As ever, we thank you for your attention and hard work in helping to improve staff experience.

Yours sincerely,

Professor Sir Stephen Powis, National Medical Director, NHS England

Duncan Burton, Chief Nursing Officer, England

Dr Navina Evans CBE, Chief Workforce, Training and Education Officer, NHS England

James Bullion, Interim Chief Executive, Care Quality Commission

Rosie Benneyworth, Chief Executive, Health Services Safety Investigations Body

Appendix A: NHS England’s statutory and mandatory training programme support offering

Products

Optimise:

• alignment survey – enabling organisations to declare alignment
• dashboards – enabling organisations to see who is aligned
• staff movement memorandum of understanding (MoU) – agreement between orgs. to passport
• digital staff passport – enabling portable training records via staff smartphones
• problem statements – summarising feedback to inform redesign

Rationalise:

• frequency charts – showing variation between organisations
• template terms of reference for local oversight committee – best practice approach to local governance
• people policy framework – template for local policy to help standardise

Redesign:

• new governance framework – for national arrangements
• table of statutory obligations – setting out all relevant legislative and regulatory clauses
• list of outcomes – setting out adverse incidents/risks/productivity loss that mandatory training aims to help avoid
• new competency framework to replace Core Skills Training Framework (CSTF) – setting out all nationally mandated subjects, learning outcomes
• new e-learning for healthcare (elfh) content – to align to the new framework

Support available

• Learning Hub for more information, access to documents and FAQs
• england.statmand@nhs.net for questions
• Webinars – visit the Learning Hub for dates
• Stakeholder Engagement Group
• Subject matter experts Communities of Practice – coming soon