The government has allocated an additional 350 medical school places, to deliver the future workforce the NHS requires.  

Last year, the NHS set out its Long Term Workforce Plan, backed by more than £2.4 billion in government funding.

It outlines how the NHS plans to recruit and retain hundreds of thousands more staff over the next 15 years.

One of the key commitments is doubling the number of medical school places in England to 15,000 by 2031 and levelling up the geographic training of places to help tackle unequal access to services.  

The Office for Students (OfS) has also now allocated 350 places in the academic year 2025 to 2026 to medical schools across the country.  

Health and social care secretary Victoria Atkins said:  “Thanks to the government’s plan for a faster, simpler and fairer healthcare system, the NHS now has record funding and a record number of doctors.”

She said the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan aims to double the number of medical school places.

Places have been provided across the country, but the OfS has used analysis of geographical distribution provided by NHS England to target under-doctored areas in its allocation of the places.  

This includes substantial increases to medical schools at universities in Sunderland, Leeds, East Anglia, Anglia Ruskin, Plymouth and Surrey. The University of Surrey is also receiving government-funded places for the first time.  

This is the second year of expansions to deliver the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan. Delivery started a year early, allocating 205 additional medical school places for the 2024 to 2025 academic year, including providing government-funded places to three schools for the first time.

This builds on the 25 per cent expansion of medical school places in England that the government completed in 2020, taking the total number of places to 7,500 per year and delivering 5 new medical schools.