Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many applications there were to NHS reservist roles in each of the last five years; and how many active NHS reservists there were in each of the last five years.

At the end of 2021, my Rt. Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, tasked NHS England with rolling out the NHS Reserve across England as an additional flexible workforce model to support the National Health Service in times of emergency, surge and in times of need. The NHS Reserve was a new model which went live to all integrated care boards (ICBs) across England in April 2022. This is an ICB-led workforce model in which individuals can support the NHS with a variety of paid roles dependant on local need.

Applications were not monitored in the first year, due to programme setup. The headcount for 2022/23 was 5,826. Applications for 2023/24 currently are 2,105. The total NHS Reserve headcount is 7,838 currently. Since the launch of the programme, the NHS Reserve has delivered over 235,000 care hours to support patients.