国家报告文书（2021年）

NHS Employers encourages and promotes good practices among recruitment agencies and as referred to in 1.3, manages and hosts the list of agencies that adhere to the Code of Practice as well as developing web pages and other promotional material about the Code. Health and Social Care employers must only use agencies on the agency list. The Agency List refresh, undertaken when the updated Code was published, ensured every agency on the list is aware of, and is signed up to the new Code of Practice. NHS Employers also has a continuous relationship with NHSEI approved international framework operators to share best practice and knowledge of implementation of the Code of Practice. DHSC has set up quarterly meetings with recruitment agencies to promote the code, share best practice and ensure agencies are kept up to date on the policy direction in the international recruitment space. These meetings are open to any recruitment agency who wish to attend.

This is described in 1.3.

This is described in 1.3

England Measures to address geographical mal-distribution NHS England and NHS Improvement is funding a £20,000 salary supplement to attract GP trainees to work in areas of the country where GP training places have been unfilled for a number of years. Since its launch in 2016, the scheme has been successful in attracting GP trainees to areas of the country that have traditionally been hard to recruit to. Due to this success, NHS England and Improvement have provided additional funding to expand the number of places now available on the scheme to 500 from 2021. As part of the expansion of medical school places by 1,500 over recent years, five new medical schools have opened in historically hard-to-recruit areas, including rural and coastal locations across England. The bidding process for allocating the new places and schools prioritised areas with a relative shortage of doctors overall, and on the basis of schools’ commitment to social mobility and widening participation in medicine. Foundation Priority Programmes have also been introduced, beginning in 2019/20.This initiative, designed to attract and retain trainees in remote, rural and coastal geographies and shortage specialties, allows applicants to rank their preference for selected priority programmes as part of their application form. Successful applicants will be offered places on specific programmes prior to national allocation. Workforce Retention The NHS People Plan sets out a range of actions to transform people’s day to day experience of working in the NHS, focusing on the things that matter to staff including support for their wellbeing, improving flexible working opportunities and building a supportive and inclusive workplace culture. This will be an important step forward in helping the NHS to retain more staff. The Agenda for Change contract includes pay flexibilities to help attract and keep the staff the NHS needs. For example, in addition to basic pay, staff may receive High Cost Area Supplement payments if they work in and around London or local recruitment and retention premia if there are challenges in recruiting or retaining a particular job role. Scotland The Scottish Targeted Enhanced Recruitment Scheme offers a one off Grant of £20,000 (gross) to GP trainees committed to working in one of the identified training posts in Scotland that are in areas and programmes that have in the past proven difficult to recruit to. These areas often have an extremely good track record for education, but are initially less popular simply because of their geographical location. Trainees commit to an agreement to complete the three year training programme. If they leave the programme early, they will be required to pay back part of the funding. ScotGEM is a four-year graduate entry medical programme which commenced in 2018 and is designed to develop doctors who are interested in a career in general practice within NHS Scotland. The programme is tailored to meet the current and future needs of the NHS in Scotland and focuses on rural medicine and healthcare improvement. The programme is taught through a partnership between the universities of St Andrews and Dundee in collaboration with NHS Fife, NHS Tayside, NHS Highland, NHS Dumfries and Galloway and the University of the Highlands and Islands. Wales Since 2017 Welsh Government has funded a financial incentives of £20,000 to attract GP trainees to areas of Wales with a history of lower than average fill rates. The incentive is targeted at selected training areas within Hywel Dda University Health Board, Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board (and Powys Teaching Health Board (‘PtHB’).

Scotland Any student undertaking the ScotGEM programme is eligible to apply for a bursary of £4000 per year; totalling a maximum of £16,000 over the four year term. This is a return of service bursary meaning that for every year that the bursary is accepted, the student is expected to remain and work in NHS Scotland for one year following graduation i.e. if the bursary is accepted in all 4 years, the student will be bonded to working in NHS Scotland for 4 years post-graduation

England Financial In July 2021 the Government announced that it was accepting the independent NHS Pay Review Body and Review Body for Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration’s recommendations in full. This means that once implemented, all NHS staff within the two Review Bodies’ respective remit groups for this year, will receive a pay uplift of 3%, backdated to April 2021. The Review Bodies reached their 3% recommendation, taking into account the need to recruit, retain and motivate NHS staff. Some medical workforces, such as Doctors and Dentists in Training (Juniors) and some Specialty and Associate Specialist Doctors (SAS) are within respective multi-year pay and contract reform deals and therefore the Government did not ask the independent Review Body for Doctors’ and Dentists’ remuneration for a pay recommendation for these groups. For junior doctors, in 2019 the British Medical Association agreed to a multi-year pay and contract deal (2019/20-2022/23). The deal guarantees Junior Doctors pay scales will rise by a minimum of 8.2% over the four-year deal and includes an additional pay investment of circa £90 million. The deal also increases allowances for those working the most frequently at weekends, enhances eligibility for night shift pay, and creates a £1,000 a year allowance for Junior Doctors working less than full time, to assist with the cost of training. The multi-year pay and contract reform agreement for SAS doctors (reached in joint negotiations with the BMA) was introduced in April 2021. The agreement is a three-year deal covering the years 2021/22, 2022/23 and 2023/24. The deal offers SAS doctors faster progression to the top of the pay scales with meaningful increases at each progression point. The introduction of a new Specialist grade improves opportunities for career progression. The deal invested 3% per year. The range of benefits available to NHS staff exceeds that which is available in many other sectors, and the value of the total reward package has been increasing in recent years. Total reward is not just about pay and includes access to the NHS Pension Scheme, which is one of the best available, alongside a generous annual leave allowance and many additional benefits, such as support for learning and development. Non-financial Agenda for Change staff continue to see the benefits resulting from the previous multi-year pay and contract reform deal (2018/19-2020/21) which introduced many contractual changes such as putting learning and development at the centre of annual appraisal processes. The Government has introduced the Blended Learning nursing programme (BLP) which aims to address national shortages in clinical expertise by offering predominantly online remote-access study to those people who may have the aptitude and values to join the nursing profession, but currently are unable to learn in traditional ways. The Secretary of State confirmed the roll out of the BLP on the 8th July 2020 and HEE anticipate that around 8500 nurses will start training in BLPs over the next 5 years. The BLP programme is also being extended to midwifery degree programmes to start by September 2022.

England In September 2019, the Government announced a £210 million funding boost for frontline NHS staff which included a £1,000 personal development budget for every nurse, midwife, and allied health professional working in the NHS in England to support their continuing professional development. As mentioned at 4.3.1 the NHS People Plan sets out a range of actions to transform people’s day to day experience of working in the NHS, focusing on the things that matter to staff including support for their wellbeing, improving flexible working opportunities and building a supportive and inclusive workplace culture.

The Government and its NHS partners have proactively provided a wide range of measures to the NHS workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic: • Emergency legislation was passed to create a temporary ‘emergency’ register of healthcare professionals – 47,000 former health professionals joined this register and made themselves available to support the NHS and vaccination programme. • Temporary measures introduced to extend the visas of all regulated healthcare professionals across the NHS and the independent sector during the COVID-19 outbreak, with the latest 12-month extension to cover those whose visas were due to expire before 1 October 2021. • Arrangements were put in place to enable healthcare students to graduate early or take up paid clinical placements. • A national package of support for staff wellbeing was put in place and has been well received by staff in the NHS. This was bolstered by many initiatives led by local employers. • The health and safety of staff has been prioritised, ensuring access to PPE, testing and putting in place risk assessments to address the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on some groups of NHS staff, most notably the ethnic minority workforce. • The families and dependents of international NHS support staff and social care workers who die as result of contracting coronavirus are offered the right of indefinite leave to remain in the UK.