9
Accepted in Part
Create plan to rebuild health visitor workforce and recruit at least 1000 additional staff.
Recommendation
The Government must create a specific plan to rebuild the health visitor workforce in its forthcoming NHS Long Term Workforce Plan. This plan must be informed by safe staffing tools to ensure that health visitors have a manageable workload. As an initial step, we call on the Government to immediately commit to recruiting at least another 1000 health visitors. (Recommendation, Paragraph 56)
Government Response Summary
The government confirmed the 10 Year Workforce Plan will include a phased delivery roadmap for health visiting services to address workforce pressures. However, they rejected committing to recruiting a specific number of new health visitors, stating it would not be responsible to fix precise workforce numbers a decade into the future.
Government Response
Accepted in Part
Government Response
Accepted in Part
HM Government
Accepted in Part
The 10 Year Workforce Plan will take a sustainable approach to workforce planning and ensure the NHS has the right people in the right places with the right skills to care for all patients, including children and young people, when they need it. We recognise the committee’s concern that a workforce plan must be credible, funded and deliverable. The plan will therefore set out a clear and phased delivery roadmap for all relevant staff groups, including those providing maternity, neonatal, health visiting, paediatrics, primary care and mental health services for babies, children and families in all settings. It will detail the actions required across recruitment, training, retention, skill mix, leadership and service redesign to address workforce pressures and build long-term sustainability. We have committed to publishing regular workforce planning. The 10 Year Workforce Plan will include updated workforce modelling and its underlying assumptions when published in spring 2026. The updated modelling will be subject to independent scrutiny by our appointed external scrutiny panel. While we recognise workforce challenges, we have been clear in the 10 Year Health Plan that workforce growth must slow to ensure the NHS workforce is on a sustainable footing for a future where staff are better treated, have better training, more exciting roles and are empowered to achieve much more. We continue to work through how the plan will articulate changes for individual professional groups. We remain committed to working with partners to ensure the plan is ambitious, forward looking and evidence-based. While the plan will be grounded in the best available data, modelling and clinical evidence, it would not be responsible to attempt to fix precise workforce numbers a decade into the future. Demand, technology, new roles, productivity improvements and models of care will continue to evolve, and so will our workforce planning. The plan therefore needs to be agile and responsive to change, setting out the actions needed to create a sustainable workforce that is fit for the future.
Source
Committee
Health and Social Care Committee
Report
5th Report - First 1000 days: a renewed focus
22 Jan 2026
HC 802
Addressee Bodies
Department of Health and Social Care
Timeline
Recommendation age
0.5 yr
Report published
22 Jan 2026