he Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow is one of more than 70 health and care organisations urging Wes Streeting, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, to engage with the sector on the development of the 10 year workforce plan.
In a joint letter, the group emphasises that a well-resourced NHS workforce will be essential to delivering the three shifts in the 10 Year Health Plan for England: from hospital to community, from analogue to digital, and from sickness to prevention.
The 74 organisations represent hundreds of thousands of NHS staff and patients, and have requested ‘productive and accessible’ engagement between the sector, the Department for Health and Social Care, and NHS England, on the plan, which is expected to be published later this year. The letter has been coordinated by the Royal College of Physicians in London.
It reads:
Rt Hon Wes Streeting MP
Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
Department of Health and Social Care
39 Victoria Street
London
SW1H 0EU
By email
3 September 2025
Dear Secretary of State,
Re: 10 Year Workforce Plan for the NHS
We are writing to you as a coalition of 74 health and care organisations to open productive and accessible engagement between the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England, and our organisations on the development of the 10 Year Workforce Plan for the NHS.
As you will remember, our organisations – which represent a large part of the health and care workforce and the patients they treat – first came together during the passage of the Health and Care Act 2022, to call for regular, independent assessments of the staff needed to keep pace with patient demand. We welcomed Labour’s valuable support and backing for that call, and your manifesto commitment to publish regular, independent workforce planning across health and social care. We stand ready to support you in delivering these commitments.
We welcome that the government has committed to publish a 10 Year Workforce Plan. A well-resourced NHS workforce will be essential to delivering the three shifts in the 10 Year Health Plan for England. Only a third of staff believe there are enough staff in their organisation to do their job properly and we know that patients are waiting too long to get the care they need. Patients and staff must be confident that the proposals in the 10 Year Workforce Plan will lead to a more sustainably staffed health service.
As such, it is crucial to get a robust stakeholder engagement process underway, and allow the time to produce a thorough, credible workforce plan with stakeholder buy-in and an accompanying implementation plan. In its analysis of the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan’s modelling last year, The National Audit Office recommended that “assumptions should be generated in transparent and systematic consultation with external stakeholders” and that more should be made of this opportunity for future workforce modelling. We ask you to ensure that this recommendation is met for the 10 Year Workforce Plan, and we stand ready to offer our considerable shared expertise.
The success of the plan will hinge on this learning from the previous Long Term Workforce Plan. The plan is also a key opportunity to deliver improvements for existing staff to improve retention and morale, and set out a pathway towards an accompanying, much needed, workforce plan for social care.
We remain supportive of a regularly refreshed, credible national workforce plan for the NHS with independently verified modelling. We are clear that funding will need to be attached to any priorities that the plan sets.
We would welcome the opportunity to support you to deliver this, and request that your department sets out, in its response to this letter, plans and timelines for engagement.
Yours sincerely,
- Academy of Medical Royal Colleges
- Action Bladder Cancer UK
- Action Kidney Cancer
- AgeUK
- Association of British Neurologists
- Association of Cancer Physicians
- Asthma + Lung UK
- Bliss
- Blood Cancer UK
- Bowel Cancer UK
- Brainstrust
- Breast Cancer Now
- British Cardiovascular Society
- British Geriatrics Society
- British Heart Foundation
- British and Irish Association of Stroke Physicians
- British Medical Association
- British Nuclear Medicine Society
- British Orthopaedic Association
- British Psychological Society
- British Society of Haematology
- British Society for Rheumatology
- British Thoracic Society
- Cancer52
- Cancer Care Map
- CATTs (Cancer Awareness for Teens & Twenties)
- Centre for Mental Health
- Clinical Genetics Society
- College of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare
- Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine
- Faculty of Public Health
- Faculty of Sport and Exercise Medicine UK
- Grace Kelly Childhood Cancer Trust
- Intensive Care Society
- Macmillan Cancer Support
- Medical and Dental Schools Council
- NHS Confederation
- NHS Providers
- OUTpatients
- Ovacome
- Parkinson’s UK
- Prostate Cancer UK
- Radiotherapy UK
- Royal College of Anaesthetists
- Royal College of Emergency Medicine
- Royal College of General Practitioners
- Royal College of Midwives
- Royal College of Nursing
- Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists
- Royal College of Occupational Therapists
- Royal College of Ophthalmologists
- Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health
- Royal College of Pathologists
- Royal College of Physicians
- Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh
- Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow
- Royal College of Radiologists
- Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists
- Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh
- Sarcoma UK
- Society of Acute Medicine
- Solving Kids’ Cancer UK
- Sue Ryder
- Target Ovarian Cancer
- Taskforce for Lung Health
- Teenage Cancer Trust
- The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy
- The Children & Young People's Cancer Association
- The Eve Appeal
- The King’s Fund
- The Neurological Alliance
- UNISON
- Versus Arthritis
- Young Lives vs Cancer.