Ministers have dramatically halted plans to double the number of doctors trained in England by 2031. Observer can reveal.
In June last year, ministers backed a long-term plan to expand the NHS workforce and pledged, amid much fanfare, to “double the number of medical school places to 15,000 from 7,500 now by 2031, with more medical school places in areas with the largest shortages. taking education to the next level and helping to address geographic inequality.” Labor also aims to increase the number of doctors to 15,000 by 2031.
But a leaked letter, written jointly by Health Secretary Andrew Stephenson and Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education Minister Robert Halfon, to the independent regulator the Office for Students, says they will only offer 350 additional places for 2025-2026 will finance doctors in training. This is less than a quarter of the annual number widely expected, and there is no guarantee that even that level of resources will be repeated.
The heads of universities and medical schools last night expressed their extreme disappointment, saying the figures fell well short of what they had expected and that they could now meet that. In Yorkshire and the North East of England, where shortages are among the most severe, there will be only 52 additional places for medical schools to bid for across the region.
David Bell, vice-chancellor of Sunderland University, said there had been “real excitement” last autumn about more students coming through the new medical school, leading to a local expansion of the medical workforce. “Now we are extremely disappointed. Just a few months ago we got the impression that there would be real expansion.
“This would have played an important role in addressing the wider inequality in the North East and the shortage of doctors. We want to triple our numbers from 500 to 1,500 by 2030 and had serious plans to do that by the end of the decade. But this pushes us back. It’s quite a task now.”
The leaked letter says the money for the 350 extra places will be followed by “larger expansions” from 2026-2027 – but it also makes clear that the government cannot guarantee that funding on this scale for new doctors in training will be repeated for admissions in future years and says this will be reviewed.
Professor David Green, vice-chancellor and chief executive of the University of Worcester, whose Three Counties medical school opened last September, said at the current rate the total of 15,000 would not be reached for another 20 years.
“We were very pleased to have been allocated 50 places for medical students to participate in September 2024,” he said. “We were hoping to bid for 54 additional home places by September 2025 and were therefore very disappointed to hear that only 350 additional places will be available for the whole of England. At this rate of progress, it will take over 21 years to meet the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan target of doubling the number of medical students in training.”
According to NHS figures, there are now 8,858 vacancies for doctors in the NHS in England. The news comes after trainee doctors began the latest round of strikes as part of their fight for higher wages and better working conditions, following a six-day strike last month.
Compared to other countries, England has a very low number of doctors in relation to the population. The average number of doctors per 1,000 inhabitants is only 2.9, compared to 4.3 in Germany and an average of 3.7 in the 38 countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
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Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting said Labor would stick to its pledge to double the number of places to 15,000 by 2031: “The Conservatives have put the brakes on medical school expansion, despite the NHS facing the worst crisis in its history going through. The Tories are moving at a snail’s pace to put out the fire. The inability to train sufficient staff not only means patients have to wait longer for care, it also costs the NHS an arm and a leg in agency costs. A Labor government will deliver on our promise to double the number of places on medical schools, but it is infuriating that the Conservatives are lagging behind and making our job harder.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said: “We are fully committed and remain on track to deliver on our commitments set out in the Long Term Workforce Plan, including doubling the number of medical school places in England to 15,000 by 2031.
“We have already increased the number of medical school places in England to 7,500 per year – an increase of 25% – since 2018, creating five new medical schools. We have accelerated this expansion by allocating an additional 205 places for 2024/2025, one year ahead of target. We are increasing capacity exponentially until 2031 instead of spreading the extra 7,500 evenly over the years.”