Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the reasons for the trends in the vacancy rate in the NHS in the period between June 2021 and June 2022.

The vacancy rate for all staff in National Health Service provider trusts had increased from 7.6% in June 2021 to 9.7% in June 2022. The number of vacancies is the difference between the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) permanent or fixed-term staff in post and planned workforce levels. Whilst in the period June 2021 to June 2022 the number of FTE staff working in NHS provider trusts had increased by 27,991, 2.4%, trust planned workforce levels had increased more quickly.

Every April NHS providers reassess their staffing requirements, often leading to increases in planned workforce levels in response to anticipated activity, such as increased elective activity, or to make additional provisions to deal with ad-hoc capacity peaks. For many trusts, this process was disrupted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, increases in vacancy rates between June 2021 and June 2022, will have been more significant, in part, due the removal of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and as such it is more appropriate to compare current levels to the pre-pandemic level of vacancies, which in June 2019 was 9.2%.