27 July 2026

In anticipation of the UK government's upcoming NHS 10 Year Workforce Plan - King's Health Partners and the Policy Institute at King's College London convened stakeholders from NHS and care organisations, universities, UK government, policy think tanks, and voluntary and community organisations at an event earlier this month. 

Opening the event, The Rt Hon. The Lord Ajay Kakkar KC KBE, Chair, King’s Health Partners, invited attendees to explore explore two key questions: 

  • what are the skills needed for a sustainable health and care system? 
  • what is the role of university health partnerships as educators and employers in building an equitable future workforce? 

Here are eight ideas discussed at the event. 

Misunderstanding productivity 

The keynote from Lord Simon Stevens of Birmingham Kt, Chair of King's College Council, addressed the difficulties of making long term plans stick and connecting workforce decisions with future models of care.  

Lord Stevens reflected on the damage done by incorrectly conceptualising the question of productivity as 'getting individuals to work harder'. This misperception not only risks damaging workforce morale but also misses the drivers of inefficiencies which are systemic and often lie in hand-offs between teams and services, particularly between health and social care. With delayed transfers of care costing the NHS billions, health and social care reform go hand in hand with the latter foundational to NHS sustainability. 

University health partnerships have a unique role 

King's Health Partners brings together care, education and research - with a workforce of around 46,000 staff and one of the largest comprehensive healthcare training pipelines in Europe. This gives the partnership both a responsibility and an opportunity to help shape the future NHS workforce, both in theory and in practice by informing local national and international policy. 

Move from ‘workforce planning’ to ‘workforce stewardship’  

A collective failure to focus on workforce development consistently over a sustained period has meant a failure to deliver long term workforce plans that stick. It was argued that workforce planning needs to be taken outside of political cycles to enable sustained planning beyond a two-to-five-year cycle.  

A long-term workforce stewardship capability, was proposed as a solution to address short-termism. This concept aligns to the recent All Party Parliamentary Group for Health's recommendation to develop a National Healthcare Workforce Development Forum.  

Recruiting the future workforce  

Historically the health and care system has benefitted from international recruitment, being the third highest OECD country for international recruitment, but this has often come at the detriment to health and care workforces in low and middle income countries.  

With the view to widening participation and expanding domestic workforce – recruitment, health and care careers should be promoted as early as primary school. This should be with healthcare professionals who look and sound like the children and young people they are seeking to inspire.  

Retention matters as much as recruitment 

Improving staff experience was identified as essential for workforce sustainability. Evidence shows that sickness absence is an indicator of system strain, staff wellbeing, workforce stability, and patient outcomes.  

Supporting employers to address the underlying causes of sickness absence not only has the potential to deliver significant productivity gains, but will help provide answers in how to continuously improve staff experience.  

Making the hidden curriculum transparent 

The NHS is the biggest employer of people from global majority backgrounds in Europe with global majorities making up nearly 30% of the workforce. Despite this only 7.9% of all staff in Very Senior Management (VSM) roles are from the global majority. In the social care workforce staff from the global majority are similarly underrepresented in senior management positions (12%) whilst making up 20% of the overall workforce. 

Alongside continued efforts to address discrimination and progression inequities, King's Health Partners has a unique role to play in making the ‘hidden curriculum’ – career enhancing activities that are traditionally influenced by existing networks or financial constraints - transparent for both students and staff. This can be achieved through proactively advertising opportunities to take part in research and innovation, education or teaching, and other career enhancing activities that support staff-wellbeing, inclusion and connection. 

Improving access to clinical academic careers  

Speakers discussed the need to improve inclusivity of clinical academic careers, both for people from historically minoritised ethnic groups and across professional groupings. National reporting on the size and demographics of the clinical academic workforce in diverse professions including community settings and social care was felt to be a vital step in improving inclusivity.  

It was also felt that we need to promote the value of research much earlier and as part of promoting health and care careers to young people 

Lifelong skills development opportunities to support the three shifts 

Central to recruitment and retention is providing lifelong skills development opportunities. 

Speakers discussed the value of making this available to the whole 'careforce', including paid and unpaid carers who have to date been poorly served. When considering the skills needed to support a shift to community working, we must understand the work of, and value, those already working in community settings. 

To harness the potential of digital and AI, transformation training is needed alongside careful implementation support for the established workforce - including to address anxiety around any change in roles. To meet the ambition for the NHS to be the most AI-enabled workforce in the world requires transformative effort to scale innovation beyond centres of excellence. Dual trained professionals who can self-regulate and benchmark across a professional identity were proposed as the catalyst for delivery. The NHS fellowship in clinical AI can be seen as the beginnings of this professionalisation.   

Final thoughts 

Workforce sustainability cannot be achieved simply by increasing staff numbers. It requires long-term stewardship, stronger staff retention, equitable access to career opportunities, and sustained collaboration between universities, healthcare providers, and policymakers.  

We believe that university health partnerships can address some of the solutions. We have the unique ability to test and scale, to deliver and advise, to think and do, and to share.  

To stay connected with our events and future workforce discussions, sign up to KHP News and subscribe to the Policy Institute updates.  

Acknowledgements 

This event is part of a collaborative programme led by Senior Policy Fellow, Amy Clark, between King’s Health Partners and the Policy Institute at King’s College London. We are working together to close the gap between evidence, policy and practice to deliver better healthcare for all, at scale. Unlike any health policy think tank, the partnership has the unique ability to combine deep specialism with testing and delivery in real world settings making the partners a 'think and do tank'.

We would like to thank all the contributors to the evening's discussions including our fantastic speakers and panellists.