Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many and what proportion of NHS staff were non-patient facing in each of the last ten years.

The following table shows the number and percentage of the full time equivalent (FTE) workforce employed by National Health Service trusts and other core NHS organisations in England that are in NHS infrastructure support roles, which represents a proxy for non-patient facing roles, as of each July from 2015 to 2025:

Source: the data can be found in the file titled “Preliminary - NHS HCHS Workforce Statistics, Trusts and core organisations - data tables” from worksheet one of the NHS Hospital and Community Health Service Monthly Workforce Statistics, published by NHS England, and available at the following link:
https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/nhs-workforce-statistics

Notes:

1. the NHS infrastructure support staffing group includes staff defined as managers, senior managers, non-patient facing clerical/administrative staff, and maintenance/works staff;
2. FTE refers to the proportion of full time contracted hours that the post holder is contracted to work. One would indicate they work a full set of hours, while 0.5 would indicate that they worked half time; and
3. these data relate to the Hospital and Community Health Service workforce directly employed in NHS trusts and other core organisations, for instance integrated care boards for the latest data point, who are paid.