NHS hires 1,300 more penpushers in just a year
...while losing GPs and 400 nurses
HOSPITALS are employing more than 1,300 extra NHS managers than a year ago while nurse and GP numbers continue to fall.
In the past year the number of senior managers – typically starting on around £65,000 – increased by 7 per cent in England to 10,300, official figures show.
Middle management has also continued to rise – up 3.3 per cent since 2016 – while nursing lost more than 400 NHS staff.
It takes the total number of managers to 32,000, an increase of almost a quarter in four years.
The Royal College of Nursing described the rise as ‘galling’ when the number of nurses and health visitors had dropped by 0.2 per cent to 284,000.
Chief executive Janet Davies urged the Government to introduce new nursing grants to boost student numbers and fill the 40,000 current nurse vacancies.
‘On the same day we hear that public satisfaction with the NHS is falling due to staffing worries, these official figures show the number of nurses continuing to slide,’ she said.
‘It feels to front-line nursing staff that they have become an easy target for cuts. It will be galling when they see senior management burgeoning too – now officially the fastest growing part of the NHS.’
And figures released earlier this month for GPs showed there were 742 fewer family doctors – 33,100 in total – a drop of 2.2 per cent since 2016. Overall, the NHS workforce increased by 1.5 per cent – or by 17,900 to 1.21million – according to figures from NHS Digital.
The number of consultants rose by 3.4 per cent and hospital doctors rose 2.4 per cent since 2016.
Midwife numbers have also crept up by 0.8 per cent over the last year. Despite pledges by ministers to cut back on the ‘manager class’ running the NHS, the statistics show the number of senior positions are on the rise. Thousands of NHS managers were cut when they took power in 2010 but the Tory Government has seen numbers bounce back since October 2014.
Many are likely to have been rehired after being handed pay- offs for redundancies as part of the much- criticised ‘revolving door’ culture within the NHS. Jonathan Ashworth, Labour’s health spokesman, said the figures amounted to ‘mismanagement’.
‘Once again we see the dramatic mismanagement of the NHS workforce under this Government. It’s astonishing that at a time of record demand for NHS services, GP numbers and community nurse numbers have all fallen in the past year.
‘Last week we heard it confirmed that there are more than 100,000 vacancies across the NHS.
‘We urgently need a sustainable strategy from the Government that gets the right numbers of staff into all parts of the NHS to keep patients safe.’
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: ‘We have record numbers of dedicated frontline staff working in the NHS and there are actually over 4,900 fewer managers compared to 2010.
‘The NHS has been recognised as one of the most efficient health systems in the world but we will continue to work with NHS Trusts to cut bureaucracy and red tape even further.’