This answer also reveals substantial numbers of additional managers. This big build up coincides with a large rise in waiting lists and a recent deterioration in staff relations. How do they intend to improve their management?
The Department of Health and Social Care has provided the following answer to your written parliamentary question (123839):
Question:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many managers have been appointed in the NHS since the end of 2019. (123839)
Tabled on: 16 January 2023
Answer:
Will Quince:
The following table shows number and the change in full-time equivalent managers working in the National Health Service trusts and commissioning bodies from the end of 2019 to the most recent month that the data is available.
| December 2019 | October 2022 | Change | |
| Senior Managers | 10,981 | 12,698 | 1,717 (15.6%) |
| Managers | 22,137 | 23,966 | 1,829 (8.3%) |
| Total of managers | 33,118 | 36,664 | 3,546 (10.7%) |
Source: NHS Digital Workforce Statistics
The answer was submitted on 23 Jan 2023 at 17:58.
January 25, 2023
How many of these were Diversity, Equality , Inclusivity and other irrelevant , jobsworth -ersity officers ? Not forgetting Period Officers ?
January 25, 2023
Or the net zero agenda zealots. So very many managers at a cost of perhaps circa £2 trillion or so PA. Yet a business that is appallingly managed. Many of the manager doubtless just inconvenience the medical staff who are trying to teat the patients. With paperwork, question forms, pointless training courses, woke lunacy… the medics need to be in charge of the manages and about 20% of this number would be sufficient. Also fighting legal claims for negligence (there would be far fewer if the medics were allowed to do their jobs with sufficient staff and resources).
January 25, 2023
Very informative, Sir John. In three years, around 10% more non-medical staff, and 15% more senior managers. It would have been good to mention the percentage increase in medical staff. If there has been an increase, that is.
January 25, 2023
How many of these Managers are monitoring the activities of other non-clinical NHS Managers and their departments and ticking boxes?
The only part of the NHS which appears to be functioning is the “Recruitment of Managerial Staff and Administrators Department.”
January 25, 2023
The payment of hospital employees should be related to patient outcomes, with severe reductions in the event of avoidable death.
January 25, 2023
Get these Managers from behind their desks at home and on the wards and in A&E, all of them for a week. Don’t say they don’t have time, they have plenty of weeks off on holiday or on diversity courses or sick!
January 25, 2023
You can get them on all the administration that they require that we are told is taking up so much nursing time from the medical staff for a start. Then can help deliver meals that we are told is taking up nursing assistant time. They can see at first hand what all their demands on front-line staff does to morale, timekeeping and patient care.
January 25, 2023
This confirms in my mind that there are too many administrators at all levels in the NHS. It can happen in any organisation if allowed, and it usually happens to increase the perceived importance of whoever heads up said department. In NHS terms 47% of everyone they employ are none medical. Cut it to 25% and you might find the money to employ more with medical qualifications, and to pay them comensurate with the work they do. In medical work there is enough pressure already to give the level of care to achieve the best outcomes; personal financial pressure is an addition they do not need.
The Times today highlights government policy restricting the number of academically qualified students from the UK who can go to medical school . Sounds crazy when we need more. My opinion is that all students entering medical training should not have to pay tuition fees, and in turn should contract ten years post graduation work to the NHS. I could say the same for engineers and scientists. To pay for it in part, up the fees for PPEs
January 26, 2023
I disagree that medical training should not have to pay tuition fees, they should get a 9% dispensation for every week they do 40 hours per week working in the NHS perhaps.
All English degrees have to pay for their student tuition; it is outrageous that only English students pay and Scottish and Welsh and N Irish students don’t. It is all-in or none-in for me, and why do we English allow this to pass, we are so passive.
The Unions agitate for themselves but they’re not there for the taxpayers that is for sure.
January 25, 2023
A 10% Uplift in staff = 25% downgrade in service. ? is there a real manager actual employed or just Empire Building look-at-me at play
January 25, 2023
+1
January 25, 2023
It is interesting to note that the ratio of Senior Managers to Managers is 1 for every 2.
It causes me to reflect on my varied working life with a number of international employers where that ratio would be laughed at, and if true restructuring would follow and jobs lost!
January 25, 2023
In parallel to cracking the inflated NHS headcount numbers… lets fastrack waiting lists by:
1. Redo a Maggie and bring back VAT/Tax deductable private medical insurance to nudge people to buy PMI.
2. Offer NHS vouchers for partial funding of private treatment – as incentive to reduce waiting list patients to go privately (but not NHS private). To come out of existing NHS budgets, that will focus their minds on staffing reductions.
3. Get NHS contract/procurement to drive down the fixed price standard operations in the private sector, for 2 above.
I am sure your readers will have many other innovative ideas/suggestions…. lets hear them please!
January 25, 2023
When they leave uni they to go somewhere? or on unemployment list which will look bad for them. Just another con job and they say they have no workers.
January 25, 2023
The 15.6% increase in senior managers has made such a positive difference since 2019, hasn’t it.
Funny how none of them take any responsibility for its failures.
January 25, 2023
Great questions extracting answers which are no surprise and which reveal depths of mismanagement and waste.
January 25, 2023
Despite all these senior Managers ‘working’ in the NHS the latest information is that average waiting times for an ambulance for Category 2 calls is 92 minutes ( a hot food takeaway shop would be out of business if it couldn’t cook and deliver their food to a house several miles away in half that time!).
This is scandalous as many victims will be dead or irreparably debilitated by the time an ambulance arrives.
Yet this could be easily solved administratively. First a room could and should be found in hospitals (the staff canteen in the unlikely event there is nowhere else) and changed into a reception room for patients arriving by ambulance. Ambulances could then deliver their patients to that Reception Room (instead of queuing and waiting outside the hospital building) and then go immediately to their next call. The other appropriate change is for some medical staff to be reallocated to the ambulance reception area to assess patients on arrival and distinguish between those who require immediate attention as their lives are at risk and others that can be left to wait if necessary.
That way numerous lives could be saved. Yet even the most senior NHS administrators, let alone Ministers seem incapable of thinking of, let alone doing these simple reallocations of hospital space and staff to achieve this.
January 26, 2023
Mobile healthcare facilities are already available, they could be parked in the car park. They have mobile large Blood donation vehicles, healthcare facilities and even 40ft trailers that do screening and scans. If they are parked up at night, where are they parked?
January 27, 2023
This is really unbelievable!! How do HMG sort this out? Is there some way that we might make hospitals/surgeries competitive and give the best ones bonuses?