Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of the provision of local retention initiatives in the Black Country Integrated Care System area.

No specific assessment has been made. However, the NHS People Plan sets out a range of actions to improve staff retention through strengthening measures to address health and wellbeing, equality and diversity, culture and leadership and flexible working. NHS England also support systems to develop tailored health and wellbeing offers to meet the needs of the local workforce. This includes the mental health hubs in each integrated care system (ICS) and occupational health services which are being supported through the Growing Occupational Health and Wellbeing programme.

The Black Country ICS is implementing national retention initiatives in addition to a dedicated pensions portal and collaboration with organisations such as Timewise to support flexible working within clinical areas. Targeted assessments of the general practitioner workforce are made and reported via a monthly partnership board.