Health Education England (HEE) has announced almost 900 additional medical specialty training posts for this year. 500 of these will be in mental health and cancer.

The 876 posts will start from August and are intended to provide an increased supply of doctors at a time when demand is high.

Many of the additional posts are being specifically targeted to tackle health inequalities and ensure training places are distributed across the country to meet patients' needs.

Professor Wendy Reid, HEE director of education and quality and executive medical director said: “The announcement of additional training posts is excellent news. Training more doctors is positive for patients and demonstrates our commitment to building a sustainable workforce at a crucial time for the NHS.

“It follows a year where we have continued to hit recruitment targets and attract more people to pursue a career in the NHS. We have seen that the number of doctors keen to join the NHS continues to rise, so it is important that we are able to reflect this with growth in our specialty training programmes.”

NHS medical director, Professor Sir Stephen Powis, said: “These new roles are an investment by NHS England in our fantastic workforce and are part of plans to have a more sustainable workforce supply, which can better support frontline teams in delivering world-leading care for patients.

“Our staff are at the heart of what makes the NHS so special to so many people and I’d encourage anyone interested in joining us – in whatever role – to search ‘health careers’ today to see what difference you could make to the millions who use our services each and every day.”

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