Mayor leads fight to recruit more NHS staff

Winter is coming and Metro Mayor Dan Norris is campaigning to recruit more NHS staff for Bath and for the RUH.

Here in the west of England, latest figures show that at the end of September there were 31,357 people on the waiting list at Bath’s Royal United Hospitals Trust and over 1,000 local people have been waiting for more than a year for an appointment.

“Local doctors, nurses, and other health care staff are doing amazing work, trying to see as many people as they can and provide quality care,” said Mr Norris, mayor of the West of England Combined Authority, the strategic authority for Bristol, South Gloucestershire and Bath & North East Somerset.

“But there’s only so much they can do after a decade of underfunding and without the staff numbers they need,” said the Mayor who has responsibility for jobs, skills and training.

The Government is yet to publish its plan to address the vast delays despite a shocking 1 in 10 people across England now being on a waiting list. While the pandemic has had a devastating effect on the NHS nationally, the target of 92 per cent of people being seen within 18 weeks of a referral has not been met since 2016. Exhausted staff will not be able to fix the backlog without additional help, the Mayor has warned. He has flagged up the

major staffing shortage across the NHS which needs to recruit 100,000 staff, including 7,000 doctors and 40,000 nurses.

Locally unfilled job vacancies, plus staff sickness mean our NHS is running around 10 - 20 per cent under expected staffing levels across different specialisms.