Government Unveils New Deal For NHS Workforce Training

The government today unveiled a new agreement for funding the training of nurses and allied health professions, which is designed to prevent health authorities from raiding training budgets to offset NHS deficits.

From this financial year, strategic health authorities and universities will be expected to work together according to a new service level agreement announced today jointly by the Department of Health (DoH) and the Department for Education and Skills (DfES).

The agreement sets out the priorities which strategic health authorities and universities will have to meet for NHS staff training which reflect local health service needs.

Details of the new agreement emerged as health minister Lord Hunt also announced a £4.3bn budget for NHS workforce training for this financial year – a 3.6% increase compared to last year.

Referring to the agreement he said: “We now have an agreement which links funding of training much more closely to workforce planning needs and gives greater long-term security to universities.”

But there was some cynicism from the deans of university departments responsible for training nurses and allied health professions that the agreement would prevent strategic health authorities from money intended for training to help out cash-strapped NHS services instead.

In a statement, the Council of Deans for Nursing and Health Professions said it was concerned whether the service level agreement was “robust” enough to ensure that training money was spent on training and not used to “offset deficits in local health economies.”

The council claimed it had evidence that just two months into the new financial year, half of the 10 strategic health authorities planned to use the training budget to help create cash reserves instead.

Universities UK, the organisation which represents vice-chancellors, welcomed the service level agreement – with reservations.

Prof Janet Finch, the chairwoman of its health and social care policy committee, said: “The longer-term strategic thinking that the service level agreement promotes is a welcome start, but we feel that it is not sufficiently robust in its monitoring and sanctions. Universities will need further reassurance that the workforce planning system has been stabilised after what has been a very uncertain time.”