Under-pressure regions report a third of posts vacant

The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists survey of service managers across the UK found a fifth of posts were vacant UK-wide, and nearly half reported recruitment worsening in the past six months.

The services are under huge pressure in the wake of covid, because the pandemic increased developmental problems among children, as well as assessment and treatment backlogs.

In NHS roles only – excluding independently run services – one in four NHS roles are unfilled across England, significantly more than in Wales and Scotland, which both sat at around a tenth (see chart below - England has a higher vacancy rate than other UK countries).

In England, the vacancy rate is highest in the East, Midlands, and North, East and Yorkshire regions — each of which has around a third of posts unfilled (see chart below - Vacancy rates significantly vary between NHS regions). The rate is between a quarter and a fifth in other regions, dropping to a tenth in the North West.

In total, the RCSLT survey – which it estimated covers 30 per cent of NHS services in England – found 644.41 full-time vacancies in England, across 124 NHS services. 

The college received responses from 175 managers of NHS speech and language therapy services for adults and children and shared the results exclusively with HSJ.

RCSLT chief executive Steve Jamieson said the “deeply troubling” vacancy rate meant people with communication, eating and drinking difficulties are “being denied their basic human rights” because they are going without specialist support.

He continued: “We urgently need to see progress on the NHS workforce plan, which must include a more realistic definition of ‘future demand’ and consider prevention, health inequalities and unmet need. Without future proofing the speech and language therapy workforce, this chasm of care will continue to grow.”

NHS vacancies are slightly worse for adult services across most of the UK, rather than children’s, and rural areas were worse affected.

The latest NHS England community waiting lists data, from November, shows 66,800 children and 18,907 adults waiting for speech and language therapy. It is the second-worst service, with 4,201 children waiting at least a year, behind only community paediatric services, for which 15,521 children were waiting at least a year.

An NHS England spokesperson said the number of speech and language therapists has increased by over a third in the last decade. 

They added: “The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan sets out our intention to increase this further by boosting training places by 46 per cent, and providing additional opportunities via apprenticeships.”

NHS workforce figures show speech and language therapy staff numbers rose from around 5,400 to 7,300 in the last decade when also including managers, instructors, teachers and therapy consultants.

The East of England, Midlands, and North, East and Yorkshire NHS regions were also approached for comment.