Responding to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, RCN General Secretary and Chief Executive Professor Nicola Ranger, said:
“A fundamental shift from hospital to community is crucial, but the reality is that today’s NHS simply does not have the nursing numbers to deliver it. Without new investment, the number of community nurses will stay on track to be half what it was two decades ago.
“Nursing staff are ready to help deliver the modernisation our health service needs, but staff are overworked and chronically undervalued. We were the only NHS profession to reject the government's pay award. Reforms must come with the investment needed to turn around nursing.”
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Notes to editors
Analysis by the College shows that district nurse, health visitor and school nurse numbers have collapsed between 2009 and 2024, falling by 45%, 32% and 31% respectively across the NHS in England.
With no government intervention, by the end of this Parliament (2029), this vital group of specialist community nurses is projected to halve in size compared with two decades ago, falling from 18,070 in 2009 to just 8,995 by 2029.
