Pledge
“We will recruit an additional 8,500 new staff to treat children and adults through our first term”
Our verdict
The number of full-time equivalent staff in the mental health workforce in England increased by 8,240 between June 2024 and May 2026.
Labour said in its 2024 manifesto that by the next general election, there will be an additional 8,500 staff working to support the delivery of the NHS’s mental health care for children and adults. This pledge applies to England only, as health is devolved.
There are a number of different roles counted under the NHS definition of the “mental health workforce”, covering areas of work from substance misuse to child and adolescent care and learning disability support, with staff deployed across the NHS in different settings and services.
We have no way of knowing if some roles will be prioritised for recruitment over others, or if recruitment will be conducted across a wide range of areas.
In June 2025, the Labour party posted on X that more than 6,700 more mental health workers had been recruited since July 2024—although the post didn’t provide a source.
A press release issued the same day said the increase of 6,700 workers was “bringing the government closer to its 8,500 target”.
In a response to an FOI request about the press release, the DHSC later confirmed it was using June 2024 figures for NHS England’s mental health workforce across all settings as the baseline, and that its 6,700 figure was calculated as the difference between then and April 2025.
Based on this information we will monitor this pledge using figures for the entirety of the mental health workforce in England compared to June 2024.
Join 74,000 newsletter subscribers who trust us to check the facts
Sign up to get weekly updates on politics, immigration, health and more.
Subscribe to weekly email newsletters from Full Fact for updates on politics, immigration, health and more. Our fact checks are free to read but not to produce, so you will also get occasional emails about fundraising and other ways you can help. You can unsubscribe at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy.
We’re rating this pledge as “appears on track”, as NHS figures suggest the full-time equivalent (FTE) Hospital and Community Health Service mental health workforce in England has increased by 8,240 between June 2024 and May 2026, though we don’t know exactly how many of these are new recruits.
The latest NHS workforce statistics show that in May 2026, there were 160,773 FTE mental health staff across all care settings and specialities, while there were 152,533 employed in June 2024.
These figures are for the total FTE staff employed in a mental health setting (NHS England doesn’t provide headcount for the mental health workforce statistics), so that includes managers and infrastructure support.
Looking just at professionally qualified clinical staff—which might be who some members of the public think of when they hear “mental health staff”—we can see that the FTE workforce grew by 8,241 between June 2024 and May 2026. Doctors, nurses and midwives, ambulance staff, and scientific, therapeutic and technical staff are included in the ‘professionally qualified clinical staff’ group.
As we develop this Government Tracker we’re keen to hear your feedback. We’ll be keeping the Tracker up to date and adding more pledges in the coming months.
Later this year I will bring forward a new plan for Britain. A ten-year plan, laying out a path from where we are now to where I believe we all want Britain to be.
Andy Burnham, Prime Minister – 20 July 2026
Progress displayed publicly—so every single person in this country can judge our performance on actions, not words.
Sir Keir Starmer, then-Prime Minister – 24 September 2024