NHS: Staff
(asked on 10th October 2025) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the cost of non-healthcare professionals in his plans for the NHS; and how this compares to the current figure.
No specific assessment has been made of the future cost of non-healthcare professionals. The NHS England 2025/26 Priorities and Operational Planning Guidance though states that integrated care boards and providers should review their workforce and spending to identify savings, including on non-frontline staff, in order to prioritise frontline care. The guidance requires systems to conduct a robust review of establishment growth and return spend on support functions to April 2022 levels. The guidance is available at the following link:
The Department estimates that expenditure on total paybill for substantive staff employed in National Health Service infrastructure support roles was around £14.4 billion in the 2024-25 financial year. For context, the total paybill for NHS staff in 2024-25 was around £86.6 billion, meaning infrastructure support staff account for around 17% of the total paybill which has been essentially unchanged since 2010-11.
NHS infrastructure support roles includes staff working in central functions such as human resources and finance, staff working in property and estates roles and also NHS managers. This paybill figure includes the cost of basic pay, additional earnings, employer national insurance contributions and employer pensions contributions. It covers staff employed by NHS trusts, integrated care boards and also central NHS bodies and support organisations.