Our local NHS is absolutely vital for our residents and we all feel the pressure - driven by our incredibly aggressive Labour led population growth in MK. My colleagues and I are therefore throwing the kitchen sink to get more resources into MK and we've got a good track record, including:
- Securing a new £200 million Women's and Children's Hospital in the Eaglestone Campus, due to open in 2030.
- Completing a 22 ward extension of our current MK University Hospital.
- Developing the two new Diagnostic Centres, one at Lloyds Court in Central Milton Keynes, with the other at Whitehouse Health Centre.
- The £10m Maple Centre, opened in 2022 to provide Same Day Emergency Care.
- Digitising our GP surgery phone lines.
- Pharmacy First - allowing pharmacies to provide medicines to seven additional illnesses so you can get faster care.
- A Dental Recovery Plan - dentist will be incentivised to take on more NHS patients which will create more than 2.5 million new appointments in the next year.
Alongside these specific investment increases, we are putting in £3.4 billion to boost NHS productivity - including to digitise our health service and make it better for both patients and staff.
Of course, we also must invest in our NHS workforce. Since 2010, NHS staffing has increased by 263,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff, including 42,000 more doctors and 55,000 more nurses, health visitors and midwives, with an estimated increase of 4,600 doctors and 2,400 nurses in general practice. However, demand has grown greater since, in part by population growth, ageing population and the once in a century pandemic. That's why we launched our first ever NHS Long Term Work Force Plan to invest more than £2.4 billion to fund the 27% expansion in training places by 2028/29, this will enable more than half a million trainees to begin clinical training over the next six years, an addition of nearly 60,000 compared to maintaining current training levels.
Practically, this includes:
- Doubling the number of medical school places, taking the total number of places to 15,000 by 2031/32.
- Increasing the number of GP specialty training places by 50% to 6,000 by 2031/32. To support this ambition, GP specialty training places will initially grow by 500 places by 2025/26, increasing to 1,000 additional places (5,000 overall) by 2027/28.
- Increase adult nursing training places by 92%, taking the total number of places to nearly 38,000 by 2031/32.
- Expand training places for pharmacists by 29% to around 4,300 by 2028/29.
I will continue to work hard to campaign for more infrastructure into MK, including for our local NHS.
