‘Irrelevant’ training will stop next year, vows 10-Year Plan

The document, published today, said: “Our first step will be to reverse the accumulation of centrally dictated training requirements, which irritate staff and add unnecessary burdens to their working day.

“It is often repetitive, irrelevant to the work that staff do and has little or no impact on the quality of care that patients receive. By April 2026, we will have completely reformed mandatory training.

“As we transform the centre and push power out to staff and citizens, we will work with providers and professionals to identify more opportunities to ease the burden on frontline workers, remove central edicts, and allow a more flexible approach to workforce development.”

The plan also commits to using technology to increase clinical capacity, including through UK-registered health professionals working abroad to provide remote services to NHS patients.

Training review

NHS England has estimated that unnecessary mandatory training is wasting more than 100,000 days of staff time every year.

This is because some refresher training is taking place more frequently than national rules require, while some staff groups are completing training that is either “not relevant or has limited benefit”.

NHSE has previously promised a redesigned national framework, although this is yet to be published.

Meanwhile, a review of medical training in England is currently ongoing and is being led by NHSE medical director Stephen Powis and the country’s chief medical officer Chris Whitty.

The 10-Year Health Plan has also vowed to expand numbers on the NHS graduate management training scheme - a two-year fast-track programme that develops university graduates into non-clinical leaders - by 50%.

The programme is highly competitive but recruits around 200 trainees per year and trains them across finance, HR, general management and health informatics.

The plan said it would increase the diversity of the scheme and “reform it to focus on the three shifts and system working”.

“NHS employers and contractors will be required to facilitate the scheme as part of their core business,” it said.

Ministers have also promised to “accelerate delivery” of General Sir Gordon Messenger’s review of NHS leadership and, by April 2026, to establish new national and regional talent management systems so leaders with the “greatest potential” are identified.

Ending trend of ‘failing upwards’

However, the plan added: “For senior leaders who let their profession and colleagues down – whether through dishonest behaviour, by silencing whistleblowers or covering up unsafe practice – we will legislate to establish a new system to disbar them from ever taking leadership roles in the NHS again.

“We know from our engagement that both the public and staff want failure to have consequences, and for us to bring an end to the trend of people ‘failing upwards’ in the NHS.”

It comes as the government is expected to publish a new NHS management and leadership framework in autumn 2025.

This is expected to include a code of practice, standards and competencies “from first-line manager to board-level leader”, and develop a national curriculum.

The plan added: “We will set out clear expectations of the standards that aspiring leaders, clinical and non-clinical, need to meet if they are to progress.”

HR reform

The plan also promises by 2030 to “implement a digital first HR strategy, automating many time-consuming processes”, under which staff “will be able to access HR services anytime and anyplace, to book annual leave, or onboard to a new organisation digitally, with virtual assistants to improve both staff and manager experience”.

This will mean ”HR professionals will be more available to focus on complex issues, where human compassion matters most”, the plan says. The government will also “replace the old NHS payroll system with a new state of the art one”.