Hospital and community services
What are the trends in staff numbers working in hospital and community health services?
This section covers some of the key staff groups working in hospital and community health services, which includes hospital inpatient, outpatient and day case episodes and accounts for the majority of health expenditure. Over 1.2 million staff work across these settings. The data does not cover GPs and practice staff, other primary care providers (e.g. dentists), one trust that does not use electronic staff records, and staff from services which are now provided by non-NHS organisations.
Progress against the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan by profession
The May 2025 workforce data lie around 60% between the baseline for the Workforce Plan (March 2022) and the first projection point (March 2027). The growth in some staff groups – such as doctors other than consultants and GPs (4,600 more than expected) and paramedics (1,800) – is above what we might expect if there was a linear increase between the baseline and March 2027. However, other staff groups – such as psychological professions (2,900 or around a fifth below expected), support to clinical staff (33,800), consultants (2,800) and GPs (400 below) – have fallen behind where we might expect to be.
Doctors, nurses and scientific, therapeutic & technical (STT) staff
These three staff groups (doctors, nurses and STT staff) account for 50% of all staff in hospital and community health services. As of June 2025, there were 379,549 full-time equivalent nurses (excluding health visitors), an increase of 11,376 nurses since June 2024.
In June 2025, the number of doctors had increased by 7,091 compared to the same point in 2024, and for STT staff (which includes occupational therapists, physiotherapists, pharmacists, radiographers, and healthcare scientists) there was an increase, from 170,947 to 178,518.
Vacancy rates
Many posts in the NHS are vacant and, at best, filled by temporary staff. In the latest quarter (April to June 2025), 5.9% of nursing posts were not filled by a permanent or fixed-term member of staff, 1.9 percentage points lower relative to a year prior. For doctors, 6.2% were unfilled (a 0.8 percentage point decrease). It is still too early to determine whether the NHS is on course to meet the nurse vacancy target of 5% by 2028.
About the target: The target to improve the nursing vacancy rate to 5% by 2028 was in the NHS Long Term Plan (2019). However, the number of advertised vacancies is different to the proportion of posts not filled by permanent staff and it is not clear which method will be used to calculate success against the 5% target.
Sickness absence rates in the NHS
While there will always be times when NHS staff become unwell and are unable to attend work, the relatively high rates in this sector suggest more could be done to address workplace issues that can lead to, cause and sustain absence. The sickness absence rate across all hospital and community health professions in April 2025 was 4.79%, which was approximately the rate compared to the previous year.
About the target: The target to reduce sickness absence rates in the NHS to that of the public sector average (2.9% in 2016) was cited in the NHS Long Term Plan (2019). It is not clear if this target includes staff working in primary care; however, robust data for primary care sickness absence is not available. The plan did not specify a time frame for achieving this reduction.
Reasons staff give for leaving the NHS
Data on why staff leave their role is, unfortunately, limited. Although NHS Digital do capture some data on reasons for leaving, this includes staff moving between NHS organisations, rather than leaving the NHS entirely. On top of this, in the most recent reporting year 28% of reasons for leaving were unknown.
Despite this, over a 12-month rolling period, there were 10,158 fewer voluntary resignations in March 2025 than there were in the previous year. Over the same period, 3,396 fewer staff left their role because of a better reward package, promotion or due to a lack of opportunities, while 3,200 fewer staff left due to work life balance, child dependants or adult dependants.
About the target: The NHS Long Term Plan (2019) set out an ambition to “improve staff retention by 2%; equivalent to 12,400 additional nurses”. However, there is no readily available, regularly updated data to monitor performance against this specific measure.