Received from: CSP
Congress notes that NHS organisations – often the largest employer in local areas – are crucial for the provision of early career, clinical and support worker roles.
Secure, well-unionised, early career roles are vital for young people. They are also the entry points onto the clinical pathways that serve our population’s diverse health needs.
However, Congress notes that these pathways are increasingly blocked by recruitment freezes and short-term cuts.
The percentage of physiotherapy staff facing recruitment freezes rose from 39 per cent to 65 per cent in 2025 alone. Jobs are particularly scarce for new graduates, who are now significantly more likely to still be job-hunting six months after qualifying than the 2022 cohort.
Congress believes job freezes are bad for patients – the NHS 10-year plan cannot be delivered without expanding the physiotherapy workforce, let alone while cutting it. They are bad for local labour markets and deepen regional inequalities – with many young people, care leavers and residents of deprived boroughs experiencing entrenched unemployment.
To strengthen the NHS’s role as an anchor institution for local youth employment, Congress calls on the TUC to lobby the Department of Health and Social Care to:
i. extend the nursing and midwifery graduate guarantee to newly qualified physiotherapists and Allied Health Professionals
ii. require and fund integrated care systems to coordinate place-based recruitment strategies with local authorities, universities and local statutory duty bearers.
Chartered Society of Physiotherapy
AMENDMENT
Paragraph 6 After “lobby the Department for Health and Social Care” add “and the three devolved nation administrations”
Add new point iii.:
Ensure adequate and fair devolved funding, and reflected accountability, to secure this across all of the UK nations.
SoR