Health Education England (HEE) is the national leadership organisation responsible for ensuring that the education, training and development of the healthcare workforce support the highest quality public health and patient outcomes.

It leads the system to support employers and professionals in addressing key workforce challenges, so that the right numbers of staff with the right skills are available at the right time.

In 2013, HEE took over functions of Strategic Health Authorities (SHAs) and their Deaneries for workforce planning, education commissioning and education provision. That was the first time that responsibility for all of these functions were within the same body, and by doing so, HEE aims to improve both national consistency and standards and local leadership and decisions.

HEE recruits doctors and dentists into training and they fund and support the training of a range of multi-professional staff and apprentices.

HEE supports Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships (STPs) through Local Workforce Action Boards (LWABs). They have two areas of responsibility – supporting STPs across a broad range of workforce and HR activity, and the local delivery of HEE and other key workforce priorities. This includes developing a clear understanding of the current and currently foreseeable future workforce – through robust workforce intelligence; a robust workforce strategy; a workforce transformation plan; and leadership and organisational development support to enable staff, patients and carers to confidently and competently lead change across pathways, organisations and systems.

HEE work relating to pharmacy

Within community pharmacy, HEE is probably best known for funding the Centre for Pharmacy Postgraduate Education. It does however undertake a wide range of work within pharmacy and it has four Pharmacy Deans who lead some of this work based in the regions. Current programmes of work include:

• Undertaking pre-registration trainee recruitment for all hospital posts and the majority of community pharmacy posts;
• Undertaking workforce planning for the profession, including the community pharmacy workforce survey; and
• Provision of various programmes supported by the Pharmacy Integration Fund.

HEE also prove the e-Learning for Health website, which many pharmacy teams use on a regular basis.

More information on HEE’s work can be found on its website.