As a former Health Minister, with responsibility for workforce, I am well aware of the challenges that can face the NHS when staffing levels fluctuate.

Part of the problem is that issues can arise rapidly, but take years to fix. You can develop a plan to deliver more doctors, for example, but it will be years down the line before the benefits start to be seen, given the time it takes to train clinical staff.

These are challenges from which Shropshire is not immune. The Care Quality Commission highlighted staffing as an issue of concern in their report into Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals NHS Trust, published last week. While there have undoubtedly been improvements since the last inspection, including outstanding care in maternity services, the Trust-wide rating is still inadequate, so there is still far more that needs to be done to bring the service up to standard.

The Hospital Transformation Programme, which has been years in the making, will undoubtedly help address some of these issues, not least through injection of £312m of capital investment into Shropshire’s acute hospitals, which the Minister reconfirmed this week in response to my Question in  the House of Commons.

But it is not just our acute hospitals where lack of qualified staff is impacting. Bishops Castle Community Hospital has recently been placed into temporary closure, due to an over-reliance on agency staff. Over the six months prior to the closure, 96 night shifts and 24 day shifts had been run purely on agency staff. The most recent advertisement for Registered Nurses to work at Bishop’s Castle attracted zero applications.

Location is an issue, as not everyone wants to come and work in a small rural hospital. But equally, pulling together different healthcare bodies to come up with one cohesive plan for NHS staffing is difficult.

So this week, the Health & Social Care Secretary set out his intention to merge the body responsible for the education and training of the health workforce, Health Education England, with NHSE/I, putting long-term planning and strategy for healthcare staff recruitment and retention at the forefront of the national NHS agenda.

I have this week supported the case for a formal workforce plan to be developed and published regularly, to provide focus within the NHS and opportunity for public scrutiny at a national level.

In the meantime, the short-term pressure on staffing due to the pandemic has not yet abated. But a renewed focus from Shropshire’s health leadership on staffing levels, recruitment and retention, coupled with government’s renewed commitment to the Hospital Transformation Programme, should start to make a difference.