The Government recognises concerns around the sufficiency of National Health Service professionals, including clinical psychologists and specialist staff, to meet rising demand for support, such as young people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and anxiety. We have already delivered on our commitment to recruit an additional 8,500 mental health workers, three years ahead of schedule, which is helping to expand capacity across a range of services and support earlier access to care.

However, we are clear that increasing the workforce alone is not enough to meet growing need. That is why we are transforming mental health services through the 10-Year Health Plan, shifting towards prevention and earlier intervention, expanding community-based support, and improving access for children and young people, including through mental health support teams in schools and colleges and wider service improvements.

We are also developing a new mental health strategy for England, which will set out how we will go further to improve access, reduce waiting times, and ensure services respond more effectively to rising demand.

NHS England commissions taught doctorate programmes for clinical psychologists. NHS England pays for a contribution towards clinical placement costs as set out in the Education and Training Tariff guidance, 100% of salary support at Agenda for Change Band 6, tuition fees, and a contribution towards travel and accommodation costs incurred when attending placements. This is set out in the published NHS Education Funding Guide.

NHS England does not publish a single total cost per trainee as payments vary between trainees, for example, depending on their geographical location.

NHS England commissions taught doctorate programmes for clinical psychologists. NHS England pays for a contribution towards clinical placement costs as set out in the Education and Training Tariff guidance, 100% of salary support at Agenda for Change Band 6, tuition fees, and a contribution towards travel and accommodation costs incurred when attending placements. This is set out in the published NHS Education Funding Guide.

NHS England does not publish a single total cost per trainee as payments vary between trainees, for example, depending on their geographical location.

Clearing house, the centralised application system for postgraduate clinical psychology courses, publishes data on graduate employment rates every year.

For people completing National Health Service training in 2024, of those who returned data, 90.5% were employed as a clinical psychologist, or an equivalent post, within 12 months of graduating. Of those working as clinical psychologists, or an equivalent post, 96.8% were working in the NHS or in other public sector funded posts. Further information is available at the following link:

https://www.clearing-house.org.uk/about-us/graduate-employment

The Department does not hold information on the numbers of clinical psychologists who have undertaken the NHS funded trainee scheme studying the taught doctorate programme who remain in NHS employment at periods of time more than a year post completion.

Based on NHS England management data, the total cost for all National Health Service funded trainee clinical psychologists studying a taught doctorate programme was £204.2 million in 2023, £235.6 million in 2024, and £251.7 million in 2025.

Decisions about recruitment are a matter for individual National Health Service employers, who manage this at a local level to ensure they have the staff they need to deliver safe and effective care.

NHS England and employers promote the retention of clinical psychologists through offering a significant amount of post-qualification training and opportunities to progress to senior grades whilst retaining them in clinical practice.

The following table provides the number of training places across the 28 training providers of Doctorates in Clinical Psychology in England over the past five years:

Source: Clearing House, available at the following link:
https://www.clearing-house.org.uk/

In addition, the following table shows the data on places and unique applicants, as applicants can apply to more than one course, that are available in total across all English, Scottish, and Welsh courses:

Source: Clearing House, available at the following link:
https://www.clearing-house.org.uk/

No assessment has been made. The Government is fully committed to attracting, training, and recruiting the mental health workforce of the future, including clinical psychologists.

We will publish a 10 Year Workforce Plan to set out action to create a workforce ready to deliver the transformed services set out in the 10-Year Health Plan.

Decisions about recruitment are matters for individual National Health Service trusts. NHS trusts manage their recruitment, including recruitment of clinical psychologists, at a local level, ensuring they have the right number of staff in place and with the right skills mix, to deliver safe and effective care.

The Government is committed to publishing a refreshed NHS Workforce Plan to deliver the transformed health service we will build over the next decade, and treat patients on time again.

NHS England is leading work nationally through its retention programme to drive a consistent, system-wide approach to staff retention across NHS trusts. This ensures trusts have access to proven retention strategies, data-driven monitoring, and can foster a more stable, engaged, productive, and supported workforce.

The Department does not hold the information requested. NHS England publishes quarterly National Health Service hospital trust vacancy and job advert data. The publication sets out vacancy rates for total NHS trust staff and, separately, for registered nurses and doctors at a national and regional level. The latest data for December 2024 shows that the vacancy rate for total NHS trust staff was 7.2%. The data is not detailed enough to identify vacancy rates for clinical psychologists.

Decisions about recruitment are matters for individual National Health Service trusts. NHS trusts manage their recruitment at a local level, ensuring they have the right number of staff in place, with the right skill mix, to deliver safe and effective care.

Clinical psychologists are an essential component of the NHS workforce. NHS England’s workforce growth commitment has included significant investment to double the number of NHS commissioned Doctorate in Clinical Psychology training places since 2019/20 to just under 1,100 places in 2024. It is expected this level of commissions will be sustained in the 2025/26 financial year.

However, we know that the NHS has been facing workforce shortages for a number of years and, while there has been growth in the mental health workforce over recent years, more is needed. That is why, as part of our mission to build an NHS that is fit for the future and that is there when people need it, the Government will recruit 8,500 mental health workers to help ease pressure on busy mental health services.

We are working with NHS England to consider options to deliver this commitment alongside the refresh of the Long Term Workforce Plan, which will revolve around the three shifts to deliver our 10 Year Plan, specifically: moving more care from hospitals to communities; making better use of technology in health and care; and focusing on preventing sickness, not just treating it.

The National Health Service is expanding access to NHS Talking Therapies for adults with common mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression, with a commitment to increase the number of people completing courses of treatment by 384,000 and increase the number of sessions, between 2024/25 and 2028/29.

Decisions about recruitment are matters for individual NHS trusts. NHS trusts manage their recruitment at a local level, ensuring they have the right number of staff in place, with the right skill mix, to deliver safe and effective care.

However, we know that the NHS has been facing workforce shortages for a number of years and, while there has been growth in the mental health workforce over recent years, more is needed. That is why, as part of our mission to build an NHS that is fit for the future and is there when people need it, we will recruit an additional 8,500 mental health workers to reduce waiting times and provide faster treatment. We recognise that bringing in the staff needed will take time. We are working with NHS England on options to deliver this expansion of the mental health workforce.

The National Health Service is expanding access to NHS Talking Therapies for adults with common mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression, with a commitment to increase the number of people completing courses of treatment by 384,000 and increase the number of sessions, between 2024/25 and 2028/29.

Decisions about recruitment are matters for individual NHS trusts. NHS trusts manage their recruitment at a local level, ensuring they have the right number of staff in place, with the right skill mix, to deliver safe and effective care.

However, we know that the NHS has been facing workforce shortages for a number of years and, while there has been growth in the mental health workforce over recent years, more is needed. That is why, as part of our mission to build an NHS that is fit for the future and is there when people need it, we will recruit an additional 8,500 mental health workers to reduce waiting times and provide faster treatment. We recognise that bringing in the staff needed will take time. We are working with NHS England on options to deliver this expansion of the mental health workforce.

The quarterly HMPPS workforce statistics publication covers staffing information, and the latest publication covers data up to 31 December 2023. The average number of psychologists is given in table 1 below.

Table 1 - Average number of psychologists¹ in HMPPS ² for each calendar year from 2010 to 2023

(full-time equivalent)

Notes

1. Only including staff in HMPPS bands 5 to 11 and will include trainee psychologists. Staff in groupworker or administrative roles in psychology at bands 3 and 4 are excluded.

2. Psychologists employed in the Probation Service are not included.

The Government is fully committed to attracting, training and recruiting the mental health workforce of the future, including clinical psychologists, and is taking a number of steps to achieve this. To increase the number of trained clinical psychologists available, Health Education England has supported a 99% per cent expansion in clinical psychology training commissions over the past four years. This expansion model is expected to achieve a growth of 2,520 additional practitioner psychologists in the National Health Service workforce by 2025.

The Department does not hold data on applicants to clinical psychology courses.

The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) does publish data on students enrolled on higher education (HE) courses. The following table shows the students enrolled onto the first year of a clinical psychology course in the United Kingdom. Enrolments to clinical psychology courses are not available for previous years.

Source: The HESA HE student enrolments 2023

NHS England does not specifically assess compliance with the national service specification. However, regional commissioning teams work with providers to regularly review provision.

A review of the Specialised Services Quality Dashboard for specialised rheumatology services will be undertaken as part of the review of the service specification. The Specialised Rheumatology Clinical Reference Group will provide advice to NHS England on the most appropriate metrics to allow assessment of the quality of rheumatology services.

The information requested is not held centrally.

The information requested is not held centrally.