Reported gains from a workforce-planning programme
West London NHS Trust has been recognised with the AHP Workforce Transformation Award at the 2026 Chief Allied Health Professions Officer Awards. The award concerns a programme intended to give the trust a clearer picture of how allied health professionals use their working time and where service capacity can be improved.
The winning team is Krupa Patel, Matt De-Giorgio, Louisa Ellis, Mitali Mukne and Jennifer O’Mahoney. Their work has centred on digital job planning and the use of workforce information alongside quality-improvement methods. The aim is not simply to count activity. It is to help services balance direct care with professional development and improvement work.
What the trust reports has changed
Allied health professionals work across many parts of care, including occupational therapy, physiotherapy and speech and language therapy. Their work can support recovery, communication, mobility, independence and day-to-day quality of life. A workforce-planning programme can therefore have consequences for patients as well as for staff, but its results need to be assessed within each service rather than assumed to apply everywhere.
The trust says digital job-planning compliance rose from 63 per cent to 99 per cent in one year. It also reports a 10 per cent increase in overall clinical activity without additional staffing costs. These are outcomes reported by the trust from its own programme, rather than an independent evaluation of every service.
Two service-specific measures help show what that can mean in practice. The trust reports a 42 per cent increase in physiotherapy interventions after weekend staffing was used more effectively. It also reports an 8 per cent increase in completed speech and language therapy referrals on admission. The figures describe particular changes within the programme; they should not be read as a prediction of the same result in every clinical setting.
Using data to plan ahead
The work is also moving beyond recording the current pattern of activity. Demand-and-capacity modelling is being piloted in 15 clinical teams, with the stated purpose of informing decisions about staffing levels, service requirements and the mix of skills needed. The analysis has also informed proposed changes to occupational therapy staffing for patients with complex needs.
The trust estimates that an additional 30 minutes of clinical time each week for every allied health professional could release 5,460 clinical hours a year. It describes that as roughly equivalent to three full-time clinical posts. This is an estimate of possible capacity, not confirmation that three posts have been created or that the extra time will automatically be available across every team.
Why the London result matters
For a London trust, the recognition puts attention on an operational question faced across health services: how to use finite clinical time well while protecting the time staff need for learning, supervision and service improvement. The programme’s reported gains are linked to more structured planning, rather than to a claim that efficiency alone resolves pressure on services.
The trust says the approach has been shared with regional allied health professional networks and other healthcare colleagues. The award acknowledges the team’s work, while the longer-term test will be whether the pilots continue to support sustainable staffing and patient care as they are used in routine practice. For now, the programme provides a measured local example of how workforce data can be used to guide decisions about clinical capacity.
