A new workforce bottleneck risks being created if the Government fails to increase the numbers of consultant and GP posts available. 

The BMA must push for increased senior doctor posts so plans to ease the shortage of specialty training places through expansion of these roles does not result in further logjams for doctors seeking employment after gaining their CCTs (certificates of completion of training).

The warning comes as members gather at this year’s BMA annual representative meeting in Brighton endorsed plans which will require the BMA to lobby the Government for change, including an increase in the number of post-CCT job roles.

Members also backed calls for every training number to be allocated a hypothecated consultant or GP job to be available upon completion of training.

Speaking on behalf of Dr Daniel Fountain, Nottinghamshire resident doctor Tal Ellenbogen (pictured top) said that with medical school intakes and training job numbers set to go up, nothing was being done to address the shortage of post-training jobs.

Dr Ellenbogen said his concerns were borne out by recent events, highlighting the Nuffield Trust’s finding that the number of job adverts for full-time equivalent GP roles in England have dropped by 45 per cent between 2022/23 and 2025/26.

He added, meanwhile, that the Royal College of Radiologists reported that 36 per cent of radiology departments had experienced a recruitment freeze of radiologists in 2025, a situation he said was leading to doctors being left out of work or with no choice but to leave the NHS and go abroad.

‘Resident doctors are voting on a pay and jobs offer, which includes as many as 4,500 additional training posts,’ Dr Ellenbogen told the conference.

‘Many of us have called for this, given the well-known bottleneck, but I wonder, are we creating another one?

‘For far too long, doctor workforce planning has been disjointed and unfit for purpose. I’m sure many of us know a colleague who has completed their CCT but are still looking for substantive posts. They’re effectively being told, “congratulations on your CCT, but there's no work for you here”.

Dr Ellenbogen said an expansion of GP and consultant posts was imperative to addressing the crisis, adding it was essential that the BMA continued to lobby for this.

‘We’re [the UK] often derided as Australia’s largest medical school, and I fear, in not too long, the world’s specialty training programme,’ he told the conference.

‘We call for an expansion of GP and consultant posts to allow all CCT holders to enter substantive employment, and for new training posts to have foreseen substantive CCT jobs. We call for an end to the lack of foresight in workforce planning.

‘No post CCT holder should have been forced abroad to get a job. No CCT holder should have to leave the medical profession to get a job. No CCT holder should be stuck in endless fellowship years in the hope that one day they too could get a job.’

Medical student Kanishk Singh said that, while he backed the principles of the motion, he warned that insisting on a hypothecated post-CCT position for every issued training number was an ‘overly rigid’ approach.

‘If every training number is rigidly tied to a guaranteed consultant post [then] we risk structurally embedding fellowship bottlenecks instead,’ he said.

‘Post CCT pathways are increasingly nonlinear. Many doctors take research posts or portfolio roles or international experience before substantive consultant appointments. The assumption of a direct one-to-one pipeline does not reflect its reality.’

However, Dr Ellenbogen’s calls were backed by resident doctor Anila Zaman who said doctors who had worked tirelessly to complete years of rigorous training should not find themselves in a position of not having a job to go to.

‘Doctors should not have to be taking jobs abroad,’ said Dr Zaman.

‘They shouldn’t be having to take multiple fellowships. They shouldn’t be having to do all of this after many, many years of training. They should be able to go into a post that is worthy of all the training that they’ve done.’