Health and care sector latest developments
Resident doctors announce six days of strike action in England
The British Medical Association’s Resident Doctors Committee (RDC) has announced six days of strike action in England after rejecting the government’s offer of a pay deal.
It has been confirmed that the strike will take place from 7am on 7th April to 6.59am on 13th April.
Dr Jack Fletcher, chair of RDC, said that they were ‘not closing the door on talks’ and that ‘no strikes need to happen, but government will need to act fast to prevent them’.
Rory Deighton, acute director at the NHS Confederation speaking on behalf of the NHS Confederation and NHS Providers (which from April will become The NHS Alliance), urged the RDC and government to ‘find a way to reach agreement and avoid the significant impact these strikes will have on patients and services, which will pile more financial pressure on services which are already making large-scale savings’.
Meanwhile, health secretary, Wes Streeting, has formally accepted the headline pay recommendation from the Review Body on Doctors and Dentists Remuneration (DDRB) which will see doctors working in hospitals, community health, and GP practices receive a 3.5 per cent pay rise, while dentists will receive a 3.75 per cent uplift.
Wes Streeting gives speech on NHS reform and the future of the health service
Wes Streeting has given a speech on the steps being taken to reform the health service.
As part of his speech, he announced new health devolution deals in Greater Manchester and South Yorkshire. Under the plans, NHS England will appoint a new NHS integrated care board chair in each area, who will also serve as the Mayor’s health commissioner.
Reporting jointly to the health service and local mayors, these new leaders will be tasked with driving improvements that directly improve people’s health.
The health secretary also announced a new ‘intensive recovery programme’ which is expected to replace the national provider improvement programme.
Five trusts – Mid and South Essex Foundation Trust, Hull University Teaching Hospitals Trust and Northern Lincolnshire and Goole FT (which together form the Humber Health Partnership Group), North Cumbria Integrated Care FT, and East Kent Hospitals Trust have been included in the programme.
Wes Streeting has said the programme will ‘target the worst-performing providers, sending in our best leaders or delivering the structural changes necessary to get them back on track’.
Matthew Taylor, interim chief executive of the NHS Confederation and NHS Providers, said that the secretary of state was ‘right to focus on areas of the country where performance levels are lagging’ and that ‘local NHS leaders will value the government's backing for difficult changes to local services that are required to enhance safety and improve quality of care’.
Public satisfaction in the NHS rises
Public satisfaction with the NHS has risen for the first time since 2019.
According to the latest British Social Attitudes Survey, in 2025, 26 per cent of British adults were either ‘very’ or ‘quite’ satisfied with how the NHS was being run in 2025, up from 20 per cent the year before.
Dissatisfaction with the NHS among respondents fell to 51 per cent, down from 59 per cent the year before and the largest annual fall in over 25 years.
Despite this, people remain pessimistic about the future of the NHS, with only 16 per cent expecting the standard of NHS care to improve in the next 5 years compared to 53 per cent who said they expected care to get worse.
Health secretaryWes Streeting said that the NHS is on the road to recovery and that patients are ‘beginning to feel the change and the NHS is showing that things can get better’.
Rory Deighton, acute director at the NHS Confederation speaking on behalf of the NHS Confederation and NHS Providers said the findings ‘show the NHS has started to turn a corner’ but that ‘NHS leaders will not rest on their laurels and know well that there is much more to be done to follow through on the progress the health service is making’.
Government publishes new Pandemic Strategy and responds to Covid-19 Inquiry Module 2 Report
The government has said that the UK’s readiness for future pandemics is being overhauled through the publication of a new Pandemic Preparedness Strategy, backed by around £1 billion of investment in health protection measures including enhancing our access to essential vaccines and therapeutics, improving our pandemic surveillance systems and expanding our ability to roll out testing to the whole population.
It came as the government responded to the Covid-19 Inquiry Module 2 Report which examined core decision-making and political governance across the UK.
Two-thirds of consultants want to work for new NHS online hospital
A new poll has revealed that almost two-thirds of NHS consultants are keen to work for the NHS’s online hospital when the service launches next year.
60 per cent of consultants and specialist doctors who took part in the poll said they would be interested in working for NHS Online alongside their current NHS roles. This is significantly more than will be required to run the service.
The survey also found that 48 per cent would be willing to offer at least four hours a week of their time, with the opportunity to care for patients innovatively, work flexibly and improve patient experience among their top reasons for wanting to sign up.
New government consultation to help children to enjoy healthier diets
The government has launched a public consultation on applying the new Nutrient Profiling Model to tackle junk food advertising.
Under government plans, food and drinks identified as ‘less healthy’ by the government’s updated Nutrient Profiling Model (NPM) would be restricted from being placed in certain locations in stores, from volume price offers that encourage over-purchasing such as get 3 for the price of 2, and subject to advertising restrictions on TV before 9pm and online at any time.
According to the government, applying the new NPM to junk food advertising and volume price restrictions could lead to 110,000 fewer cases of childhood obesity and up to 520,000 fewer cases of adult obesity in the long term.
Hospital delayed raising alarm about meningitis outbreak
It has been revealed that the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) was only alerted to the first hospitalisation case in the Kent meningitis outbreak two days after the patient arrived at hospital, despite a legal requirement for immediate reporting.
The patient arrived at the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Hospital in Margate on Friday 13 March but the hospital, which is run by East Kent Hospitals NHS Trust, only raised the alarm two days later.
UKHSA confirmed that an opportunity was missed to report the first case sooner, and that this delayed its response to the outbreak.
Don’t ask for ‘unhelpful’ national mandates – NHSE director
Claire Fuller, NHS England’s national medical director, has warned health campaigners against demanding ‘unhelpful’ new national rules and mandates.
Ms Fuller told the Pathways from Homelessness conference that she is against central mandates because ‘we have never really made anything better by making anything rigid’.
She said the shift of integrated care boards to becoming strategic commissioners will give them a ‘greater understanding of their population’ need and empower them to ‘commission services more appropriately, and in theory, move the money around to match it’.
NHSE says clunky IT costs as much as staff absence
Poor usability of computer systems costs the NHS as much staff time as sickness absence, NHS England’s head of digital transformation, Dermot Ryan, has said.
Mr Ryan, who led the £1.9 billion frontline digitisation programme at NHS England to install electronic patient records across England’s hospital sector, said that internal research had shown the NHS was ‘in the bottom decile’ globally on tech usability.
Speaking at the Rewired conference in Birmingham, he said that the long-awaited digital maturity scores for hospital trusts would be made public shortly.
LGA to drive new public health improvement programme for councils
A major new local authority public health improvement and support offer is to be led by the Local Government Association (LGA) over the next three years.
Funded by the Department for Health and Social Care, the programme will see the LGA work with councils in England, starting in June 2026, to support local public health teams to deliver better health outcomes for their communities.
The programme will be developed in partnership with councils and directors of public health to ensure it can best support improvement needs and help deliver local public health priorities.
