Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 20 February 2018 to Question 127707, what information his Department holds on the number of nurse vacancies and in what format such information is held.

NHS Digital publishes the number of vacancies that are advertised on NHS Jobs, the dedicated online recruitment service for the National Health Service. However, as the basis of the figures is the number of vacancies advertised for the first time in each given month, it is not possible to determine from these figures the number of vacancies live at any given point in time. The figures only cover those vacancies advertised via NHS Jobs, and it is not always possible to determine how many posts are associated with any given advertisement. The published figures are at the Health Education England region and do not go to the level of individual trusts.

This data is relatively new and there is limited data to establish trends. It is also important to note the distinction between job adverts and actual vacancies as many trusts are in a constant process of recruitment with single job adverts often covering multiple job vacancies.

The latest NHS Digital figures show that over 34,000 nursing and midwifery vacancies were advertised in the three months to September 2017 across England.

The NHS Digital vacancy figures are available at the following link:

www.digital.nhs.uk/catalogue/PUB30196

NHS Jobs data from NHS Digital is not the only source of vacancy data.

NHS Improvement have produced their own estimates and analysis for vacancy numbers.

NHS Improvement figures represent management information only and are not an official statistic. Their data for nursing and midwifery shows that there are 35,835 full time equivalent nursing and midwifery vacancies, of these approximately 31,351 (87%) are filled by temporary staff (32% agency and 55% bank).

The latest NHS Improvement vacancy figures are available at the following link:

www.improvement.nhs.uk/resources/quarterly-performance-nhs-provider-sector-quarter-3-201718/