NHS pay review body: twenty-sixth report 2012 - Official Documents

Chapter 5 – General Workforce Issues
Introduction
5.1
5.2
In addition to our remit for those AfC staff earning £21,000 or less, the Chief Secretary
to the Treasury’s remit letter also confirmed that for those workers paid above £21,000
the UK Government would provide information about recruitment, retention and other
aspects of the affected workforces as appropriate.
We therefore review the information provided by the parties on the AfC workforce under
the following headings:
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Trends in recruitment and retention;
Morale and motivation;
Workforce planning;
Training and development;
The Knowledge and Skills Framework; and
Data relating to our remit group.
Trends in Recruitment and Retention
5.3
We summarised the available evidence on recruitment and retention relating to those
earning £21,000 or less in Chapter 3. From this evidence, we continue to conclude
that overall for AfC staff the position on recruitment is healthy and retention is stable.
In this section, we therefore review the information provided by the parties on training
commissions and AfC shortage groups.
Recruitment
5.4 The Staff Side pointed to an ageing profile of the NHS workforce in England which it
suggested would be worth tracking to establish whether it represented a worrying trend
for the NHS in attracting younger staff. They stated that an ageing workforce had long
been apparent within nursing and midwifery. They highlighted that 12.8% of all nurses
and health visitors were over the age of 55 in 2009.
5.5
5.6
The commissioning levels for non-medical groups within the NHS were set to “plummet”
between 2010/11 and 2011/12, according to the evidence submitted by the Staff
Side. Anticipated commissioning rates were well below recent levels for the majority of
professions, with the exception of community nursing where the increase was almost
entirely driven by the commitment to increasing the number of health visitors. The Staff
Side believed a short term, cost-driven “slashing” of commissioned places across almost
all occupations that require professional training was at the expense of long term medical
needs.
The Staff Side highlighted the decrease in the number of additions to the nursing
workforce from outside the EU. This had occurred while there was a simultaneous
increase in UK nurses migrating to work abroad.
The
5.7 Department of Health reported on training commissions. The two routes into
nursing had seen a switch from diploma to degree commissions and therefore there had
been a rise in degree commissions and a reduction in diploma commissions by 2010/11.
The Department also reported on the decrease in training commissions for allied health
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