Article Summary
Drawing from the insights of Jackie Chapman, Founder and Director of Jackie Chapman Ltd and former Group Principal for Growth and Innovation at Capital City College Group, one of the UK's largest further education college groups, this article explores why stronger strategic partnerships between NHS organisations and further education colleges could play a critical role in addressing workforce challenges. While recruitment, retention and workforce development remain major concerns across health and care, Chapman argues that many of the capabilities needed to support the NHS already exist within local colleges.
Across the NHS, recruitment, retention and workforce development remain persistent challenges. Vacancies place additional pressure on existing teams, increase workloads and can make it harder for organisations to support and develop the people they already have.
While significant effort is invested in attracting new staff, many Trusts find themselves caught in a cycle of continuous recruitment. Resources are dedicated to filling vacancies, onboarding new starters and supporting workforce development, only for some employees to leave before becoming fully established within their roles. Swelling patient demand and mounting compliance requirements further complicate matters.
The consequences extend beyond workforce numbers alone. Recruitment activity consumes substantial organisational time and resource, while gaps in staffing can also impact operational performance, workforce wellbeing and the ability of experienced staff to provide support to new colleagues.
Yet despite the scale of the challenge, there may be an important workforce partner hiding in plain sight. As Jackie Chapman observes,
Colleges are enrolling thousands of students onto study programmes and T Levels linked to the healthcare industry
This points to a clear opportunity: to move beyond individual recruitment or training relationships and build longer-term strategic partnerships between NHS organisations and further education colleges.
Looking beyond recruitment
Workforce discussions within the NHS often focus on recruitment. How do we attract more candidates? How do we fill vacancies faster? How do we retain valuable staff?
While these questions remain important, they can sometimes overshadow a broader issue: how workforce pipelines are created in the first place.
Every year, colleges across England engage with thousands of young people and adult learners preparing for employment. Students enroll on programmes linked directly to healthcare, business administration, digital, estates, engineering, facilities management and leadership. In other words, many develop skills that align closely with NHS workforce requirements. At the same time, colleges employ dedicated teams responsible for employer engagement, apprenticeships, careers advice, work experience and workforce development. These teams spend much of their time building relationships with employers and helping learners progress into meaningful careers.
Despite these shared interests, though, the relationship between colleges and NHS organisations is often fragmented. In many areas, partnerships already exist: healthcare students may undertake placements within NHS settings, colleges may provide apprenticeship training or deliver specific qualifications, and Trust staff may occasionally participate in careers events or employer talks.
However, these relationships frequently develop around individual projects or short-term objectives. They are often valuable but not always strategic. As Jackie points out,
In many instances partnerships do exist between colleges and their local NHS. But these are frequently transactional relationships, between one department of the college and one from the NHS Trust and based on one particular need of either party
This fragmentation can prevent colleges and NHS organisations from taking a more coordinated approach to local workforce needs.
Inspiring the workforce of the future
One of the biggest opportunities lies in how the NHS engages young people. Many students form their understanding of the NHS through personal experiences as patients or through media coverage. Those experiences can be positive, but they rarely capture the full breadth of one of Europe’s largest employers.
When young people think of careers in the NHS, they often think first of doctors and nurses, but the NHS depends on a far broader workforce. It encompasses managers, estates professionals, engineers, digital specialists, cybersecurity experts, accountants, project managers, human resources teams, procurement professionals and countless other roles. The challenge is to help students understand the scope of opportunities available.
One annual employer presentation is unlikely to transform perceptions. Meaningful engagement requires sustained interaction, exposure to role models and opportunities to experience workplaces firsthand. Hearing directly from people working within NHS organisations can also help students understand what different careers look like in practice, how professionals progressed into their roles and what opportunities exist for future development.
A more coordinated partnership between colleges and NHS organisations could create these opportunities on a much larger scale, engaging not only health and social care students, but also learners studying business, technology, construction, engineering and professional services.
Bringing learning and experience together
The benefits of stronger collaboration go beyond student engagement. Many NHS organisations invest heavily in staff development, continuous professional development (CPD) and leadership training. Workforce pressures and financial constraints, however, can make delivering training consistently a challenge. In some organisations, learning opportunities also evolve within individual departments, creating variation across services and additional pressure on internal training teams.
Closer collaboration with colleges could offer an alternative approach. Many colleges possess specialist facilities, experienced trainers and established education infrastructure that could support NHS workforce development. Rather than viewing colleges simply as providers of qualifications, Trusts could see them as long-term partners in workforce capability and organisational development.
Some organisations have also begun exploring shared spaces, co-located facilities and collaborative training environments where education and healthcare activity sit alongside one another. As we have discussed previously, shared infrastructure can create opportunities to make better use of existing estate while bringing different services and organisations closer together. Making learning more visible and accessible within the working environment could help embed workforce development more closely into everyday organisational life.
As Jackie notes, “With an onsite facility, staff CPD can be better targeted and supported by college staff, freeing up internal resources.” She also highlights a common limitation: “Some NHS Trusts do have a dedicated training space, but all too often it is a function squeezed into an underutilised space hidden away.”
A different approach to workforce supply
There is an opportunity to rethink elements of the recruitment process itself. Rather than seeing recruitment and education as separate functions, a partnership approach could create a more seamless pathway between employment and learning. Candidates who are not yet ready for a particular NHS role could be supported into training programmes designed to help them gain the necessary skills and experience.
For NHS organisations, this could reduce pressure on recruitment teams and improve the quality and preparedness of applicant pipelines. For colleges, closer partnership could provide a clearer understanding of local NHS workforce needs, helping them align training provision more directly with available employment opportunities.
In practice, this could create a more connected route between education, skills development and employment, where people are supported not simply towards a job, but towards the training and experience they need to succeed within it.
Building a partnership for the long term
The NHS is rightly investing significant attention in workforce planning. Yet solving workforce challenges requires more than filling today’s vacancies. It requires creating sustainable pathways into employment, supporting career progression and developing the skills that healthcare organisations will need in the future.
Further education colleges already possess many of the assets needed to support this ambition. They engage learners at scale, deliver vocational training, provide workforce development and maintain extensive relationships with local communities and employers.
As the NHS undergoes significant structural change, the case for long-term workforce partnerships may grow even stronger. Workforce planning responsibilities are expected to become increasingly focused at the local and system levels, following the abolition of NHS England and the transfer of its functions to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). During this 2025–2027 transition period, Trusts should expect increased workforce planning and financial reliance on Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) and Integrated Care Boards (ICBs). Delays in national workforce guidance and programme approvals should also be expected, alongside pressure to reduce costs while expanding clinical pipelines.
While the closure of NHS England brings short-term uncertainty, it may ultimately result in a more locally coordinated, clinically focused NHS recruitment model. For Trusts, developing recruitment and workforce strategies aligned with local system plans and financial realities will become a greater priority. Apprenticeships, particularly in nursing, allied health professions (AHPs) and healthcare support roles, may become a key route to building sustainable workforce pipelines. At the same time, non-clinical apprenticeship and recruitment routes may face greater scrutiny as national programmes are re-scoped and workforce investment becomes increasingly focused on priority clinical roles.
Partnerships with further education colleges could give NHS organisations enhanced flexibility, responsiveness and access to locally developed talent. Trusts may also rely less on national programmes, working more closely with education partners to help address workforce shortages and support long-term capability within their communities.
The opportunity now is to move beyond individual placements, isolated projects and transactional arrangements towards genuine strategic partnerships. That means bringing NHS and college leaders together around a shared understanding of local workforce needs, so that recruitment, education, apprenticeships and staff development are considered connected parts of a longer-term workforce strategy.
Colleges already have a role to play in developing the health workforce. The question now facing NHS leaders is whether the health service can afford not to make greater use of a partner that already sits at the heart of its communities.
