A&E in Portsmouth under 'huge stress' due to 'enormous staff shortages' amid calls from council boss to 'get real' as authority has to plug £3.5m shortfall

Leader of Portsmouth City Council Gerald Vernon-Jackson has said people need to ‘get real’ about the mounting crisis in the NHS. The councillor has urged the government to use European workers to plug the gap of ‘enormous staff shortages’ in the sector amid a £3.5m shortfall the council has to plug the gap.

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It comes as The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) said December was the worst for hospital bed occupancy and A&E waiting times, while the Society for Acute Medicine said services were being ‘pressurised like never before’.

Queen Alexandra Hospital in Cosham, part of Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust, was among several NHS trusts to have declared ‘critical incidents’, meaning they cannot function as usual due to extraordinary pressure.

The president of the RCEM, Dr Adrian Boyle, said that Britain has among the lowest proportional hospital bed capacity in Europe and the NHS is facing a ‘staff retention crisis’ after losing 40,000 nurses in 2022. ‘These long delays are harmful for people – they are sick and need hospital but are waiting in the corridor of an emergency department. It’s undignified and it’s dangerous,’ he said.

Cllr Vernon-Jackson said: ‘Everyone knows it is a huge problem at A&E in Portsmouth and around the country. The whole health system is under huge stress. There are long waiting times at A&E and at St Mary’s Hospital for minor injuries.

‘We have big problems with social services and social care with it difficult to recruit home carers to look after people. The whole system is under huge pressure and has an effect on everyone. Staff are doing all they can, whether it is paramedics, those in A&E at Queen Alexandra Hospital or working on the wards, as well as people working in social care.

‘Everyone is working as hard as they can but there are enormous staff shortages. It is much more difficult to recruit people now than before. After Covid, 500,000 people decided to retire early. We are no longer part of Europe so do not have that source of people open to us.’

The council leader also believes many NHS workers are choosing ‘easier’ careers now. ‘To go into social care is not the easiest job in the world…people are choosing easier jobs,’ he said.

Cllr Vernon-Jackson said increased funding and a ‘better’ way of working between social services and NHS would help. ‘If there are no social services beds in care homes then people get stuck in hospital and get stuck on trolleys in A&E. There’s a real lack of thinking about the system as a whole,’ he said.

The council boss said the government has left the council to effectively foot a bill worth £3.5m because they ‘will not provide the money’ to cover services. ‘So I’ve been asked to make cuts to free up beds at QA,’ he added. ‘There’s £3.5m worth of cuts I have to find because the government won’t fund social services.’

Cllr Vernon-Jackson said all parties had to work together and ‘get real’ on the problem – with him saying European workers are vital for the system to work. ‘We rely on them to keep going,’ he added.