‘Bloated bureaucracy leaves NHS unfit for purpose’

It’s hard to know where to start when it comes to measuring performance in the NHS. Knowing how many staff are employed might be a good start but the fact that we do not have precise figures for that is scandal enough given the scale of the NHS budget.

We are as ever indebted to our research-based affiliate Brexit Facts4EU.Org for attempting to shed some light on the employment statistics in a two-part report, a summary of which we lay out below.

Part 1 attempts to establish the total numbers employed in the NHS.

Part 2 reveals the huge rise in the number of non-patient-facing staff recruited in the past three years alone.

With a bureaucracy as bloated as this, is it any wonder that waiting times and numbers continue to be as high as they are?

We are also indebted to Martin Daubney and the GB News team for providing us with the opportunity to discuss these figures on air with him last week.

We summarise the key information including links to each of the two articles in full.

NHS Report – Part 1

Our bloated NHS – Over 1.6m employees, huge increases,
and nothing to show for it

Total NHS staff excluding GPs and primary care staff

England : 1,308,824
Scotland : 158,375
Wales : 95,445
Northern Ireland : 64,688
TOTAL : 1,627,332

[Source : Office for National Statistics, 06 Mar 2024.]

A link to the full article can be found here.

NHS Report – Part 2

Massive growth in number of non-patient-facing staff

SUMMARY

NHS England non-front-line staffing numbers from Jan 2020 to Dec 2023

(The UK formally exited the EU on 31 Jan 2020.)

1. All NHS Hospital & Community Health Service (HCHS) staff

Jan 2020 : 1,275,883
Dec 2023 : 1,488,207 – an increase of 212,324 (+16.6%)

[Source : NHS England data, accessed 09 Mar 2024.]