Committee publication · Correspondence · 8 January 2026
Correspondence to the Department - Long Term Workforce Plan and Neighbourhood Health
From: Health and Social Care Committee
Inquiry: Delivering the Neighbourhood Health Service: Workforce
Summary
The Health and Social Care Committee writes to the Minister of State for Health following November 2025 evidence sessions on NHS workforce planning for Neighbourhood Health. The letter identifies four major barriers to attracting and retaining staff in community settings: lower status and pay than acute roles, limited career progression, insufficient training infrastructure, and lack of support for early-career professionals. It calls for concrete proposals in the 10 Year Workforce Plan to address these gaps and develop workforce skills for integrated, multidisciplinary community practice.
Key findings
- Community healthcare roles are perceived as lower-status and less interesting than acute settings, with negative stereotypes starting in undergraduate training.
- Pay disparities exist: district nurses are band 6 while hospital ward managers doing equivalent work are band 7; pharmacists with prescribing skills concentrate in hospital, not community pharmacy.
- Career progression for nurses and Allied Health Professionals is severely constrained in community settings, with 21% of occupational therapists leaving within two years of graduation.
- Lack of clinical supervision infrastructure and senior staff availability in community settings creates a 'leaky pipeline', preventing early-career professionals from receiving adequate support.
- Staff lack protected continuing professional development time and training capacity due to understaffing; community pharmacists face constraints on off-site training due to staffing requirements.
Recommendations
- The 10 Year Workforce Plan must contain clear proposals to address pay disparities between community and acute settings.
- Embed community care training across all pre-registration programmes with equal emphasis to acute settings.
- Create advanced practice opportunities and leadership pipelines for nurses, AHPs, and pharmacists in community settings.
- Establish protected continuing professional development time and backfill arrangements to enable staff to undertake training.
- Include a dedicated training and support programme for AHPs to develop leadership skills and enable career progression to senior positions.
- Address infrastructure gaps: increase GP training premises and expand clinical supervision capacity in community settings.
Tone
CriticalTopics
Key actors
Karin Smith (Minister of State for Health), Steph Lawrence (Queen's Institute of Community Nursing), Kamila Hawthorne (Royal College of General Practitioners), Karen Poole (Chartered Society of Physiotherapy), Amandeep Doll (Royal Pharmaceutical Society), Tanya Rumney (British Dietetic Association), Layla Moran (Chair, Health and Social Care Committee)
Notable line
“The Government 's desired shift towards Neighbourhood Health will not be delivered if the community sector offers staff worse pay, fewer opportunities to advance their careers and make use of their skills …”
Key Quotes
“- skill" working in the community.”
“"dissing of general practice" as a less difficult speciality was common.”
“"glass ceiling" for AHPs in terms of career progression .”
“… currently a third of pharmacists are prescribers, but less than 10% of them work in community pharmacy”
“There is no backfill, so there is nobody to undertake the work. Releasing people to do the training is a real issue.”
“… no pipeline " of professionals from her background who would be able move into her role.”
Source · parliament.uk record ↗