Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what her Department's plan is to ensure sufficient workforce capacity for the community diagnostic centre programme.

The National Health Service has recently published a Long Term Workforce Plan which sets out long term workforce projections, including for the diagnostic workforce. The Government has backed the plan with over £2.4 billion to fund additional education and training places over five years.

NHS England is committed to ensuring that there is sufficient workforce capacity, including for community diagnostic centres, to enable workforce expansion with the right skills and roles, in the right locations and at the right time. This includes reliable recruitment routes to deliver the required uplift in staffing. Last year (2022/23) this resulted in over 4,300 new starters across the training pipeline for cancer and diagnostics.

Digital diagnostic investment this spending review period is anticipated to deliver a c.10% uplift in workforce productivity, which will free up diagnostic workforce capacity further.