Staff numbers in the NHS have reached a record high but nearly half of doctors and nurses feel overstretched at work, figures published today suggest.

After a dip in the previous two years, the annual census showed that the health service reached a peak of 1,368,200 staff in September last year. This was a 2.8 per cent increase on the previous year and a 27.7 per cent increase compared with 1998, the NHS Information Centre said.

This contrasts with the findings of a Healthcare Commission survey in which 47 per cent of health service staff said that there were not enough people to “do the job properly”.

The poll of 160,000 workers at 390 NHS trusts also found that 31 per cent of staff did not feel valued by their trust, compared with 36 per cent in 2007, and 35 per cent of staff had witnessed in the previous month an incident that “could have hurt staff or patients”, compared with 31 per cent in 2007.

The annual census showed that almost all categories of staff had grown, with marked increases in the numbers of school nurses, modern matrons, GPs, community matrons, physiotherapists and radiographers.

Ann Keen, the Health Minister, highlighted the “significant increase in the major clinical groups including 8,563 more qualified nurses, 3,117 more matrons, 1,358 more GPs, 1,249 more consultants, 2,395 more doctors in training and 968 more physios than 2007."

She added: "The NHS workforce is now at record levels and has increased by almost 300,000 over the last ten years. [The health service] is making a significant contribution to tackling unemployment in the current economic downturn."

The Conservatives criticised the 9.4 per cent increase in the number of managers in a year. Andrew Lansley, the Shadow Health Secretary, said: “Yet again funds that are urgently needed for the front line are being swallowed up by Labour’s bureaucratic black hole.

“Now, more than ever, taxpayers are looking to the Government to deliver real value for money to minimise the impact of the recession on the NHS. What the NHS needs is good management, not over-management. Unnecessary increases in the number of managers means there is less money to be spent on people who actually care for patients like doctors and nurses."

The Royal College of Midwives pointed out that three quarters of the total number of new midwives were in London. “In some regions the midwife numbers have fallen and some are at best treading water, at a time when the birthrate is rising steeply,” the college said. “There needs to be a marked increase in the pace of change if the Government’s pledge of an extra 3,400 full-time midwives by 2012 is to be met.”

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