- UK-Guidance NHS Staff Standards
Two documents pertaining to the above were published on the government website on 6 July 2026 with the following text notably:
Guidance
NHS staff standards
The NHS staff standards set national minimum employment requirements to improve staff experience, outlining employer actions and what staff can expect.
Details
The 10 Year Health Plan committed to developing a new set of staff standards which will outline minimum standards for employment across a range of areas, aimed at improving staff experience. The standards set out the actions employers must take to deliver them and what staff can expect at work as a result.
The documents published here bring together:
- an overview explaining why the staff standards have been introduced, how they will be used and what each standard means in practice
- the full staff standards, setting out the detailed requirements for employers
The staff standards focus on key areas that staff have told us matter most, including:
- line management
- health and wellbeing
- violence prevention and reduction
- sexual safety
- tackling racism
- flexible working
The standards have been developed by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England, working closely with employers and trade unions through the Social Partnership Forum, and are intended to be implemented locally through partnership working.
The standards are for NHS staff, employers and leaders, and should be used alongside existing workforce policies and initiatives to support implementation.
The standards will apply to secondary care, which includes acute, mental health, ambulance services and community healthcare.
The two documents can be found below:
NHS staff standards: overview and summaries
NHS staff standards: detailed requirements for employers
- HSJ-‘Clear Consequences’ for leaders who fail to tackle racism
An article published by the HSJ with the above title on 8 July 2026, by Nick Kituno, reads as follows:
>Board members must have “published Specific Measurable Achievable Relevant [and] Time-Bound” objectives on tackling racism
>CEO or chief operating officer “must be appointed as senior responsible officer for tackling racism”
>Trusts’ performance against new standards will affect NHS Oversight Framework rankings
Board members will be held accountable for tackling workplace racism via personal objectives that must be made public under new national standards.
The government’s NHS staff standards guidance, published this week, says organisations must “ensure every board member (including non-executive directors) has a published… objective on tackling racism”.
They must appoint either their chief executive or chief operating officer as the senior responsible officer for tackling racism, and they will be “held to account against relevant workforce data [with] strong and clear consequences for poor performance”.
“Tackling racism” is one of six staff standards set by the Department of Health and Social Care, as proposed in last year’s 10-Year Health Plan.
The guidance said: “The 2025 NHS Staff Survey showed that instances of staff experiencing discrimination at work from patients, their families and the general public, managers or other colleagues, had increased again and are higher among ethnic minority staff compared to white staff.
“Given these inequalities, this standard sets out the minimum national expectations for how all NHS organisations must prioritise, prevent, respond to and learn from incidents of racism in the workplace.”
The other five standards cover: preventing violence, improving sexual safety, promoting flexible working, line management, and health and wellbeing support.
NHS England’s trust league tables will now include measures from the annual NHS staff survey, which seek to measure how well they are adhering to the staff standards.
Health minister Karin Smyth said: “For the first time ever, how trusts treat their employees will be measured and published, because we know that when staff are supported, patients get better.”
Habib Naqvi, CEO of the NHS Race and Health Observatory, said: “The standard must now be backed by systemic action, evidence-based interventions, and leadership accountability.
“Our ‘7 Principles of Anti-Racism for the NHS Workforce’ will help create equitable, inclusive workplaces. We stand ready to help support organisations as they embed these standards.”
Leadership code lands
In addition to the staff standards, NHSE this week published a much-delayed NHS Leadership and Management Framework.
The document is intended to set expectations for leaders across all NHS organisations, and has been developed over several years in response to government-commissioned reviews by Tom Kark KC in 2019 and General Sir Gordon Messenger in 2022.
A draft version late last year, which had been approved by health ministers following years of development, was criticised as having “too much fuzzy language” and being “impossible to implement”.
Officials said they would do more work on it, but the framework published this week is largely the same.
It includes a “leadership and management code” with six principles: be accountable, be compassionate, be collaborative, be inclusive, be curious, and show integrity.
There is also a set of standards spanning three overarching areas: delivering across health and care, personal impact, and managing people and resources. Each includes three competency descriptions. NHSE has also published a self-assessment tool.
All leaders and managers are expected to meet the “fundamentals” before they are then segmented into stages for types of roles, from new leaders and first-line managers through to board-level members and managers.
Trusts are expected to implement the framework this year, and managers to use the self-assessment tool as part of their appraisal. It will be used as part of the “fit and proper person test” from 2027-28.
NHSE’s board paper in November said the framework would help “prepare managers for future regulation” – a reference to government’s commitment to introduce statutory regulation of managers. Regulation is not referenced in this week’s documents, however. Publication coincides with the launch of the NHS College of Leadership and Management.
- HSJ-‘Anti-Muslim hostility’ to be targeted by the NHS
An article published by the HSJ with the above title on 7 July 2026, by Nick Kituno, reads as follows:
>NHSE told to adopt government’s definition of anti-Muslim hostility
>It must “set clear expectations that every trust, ICB and arm’s length body does the same”
>Ministers consider adding Jewish and Sikh as ethnicity categories to data collections
The NHS will strengthen efforts to combat “anti-Muslim hostility” after the government’s decision to commission a review focused on antisemitism caused unease.
Former health and social care secretary Wes Streeting commissioned prominent antisemitism campaigner Lord Mann to review “racism in the NHS and healthcare regulatory system” last year, following a series of “deeply troubling” antisemitic incidents. The announcement came after Sir Keir Starmer said there were “just too many clear examples of antisemitism” in the NHS “that have not been dealt with adequately or effectively”.
The report was published last month, with government accepting all of its 36 recommendations, including antisemitism training for senior leaders.
However, commissiong a report with such a strong focus on antisemitism caused concern among some anti-racisim campaigners.
The Department of Health and Social Care’s full response to the Mann review appeared to try and respond to these concerns.
It revealed: “As part of the government’s commitment to tackling discrimination in the NHS, the government is also asking NHS England to adopt the recently published government definition of anti-Muslim hostility and set clear expectations that every trust, integrated care board and arm’s length body does the same.”
The government response added: “Within the NHS, we have already committed to strengthening existing mandatory anti-racism training, which will include specific content on antisemitism and anti-Muslim hostility developed with subject experts.”
The government defines anti-Muslim hostility as “intentionally engaging in, assisting or encouraging criminal acts… that are directed at Muslims because of their religion or at those who are perceived to be Muslim, including whether that perception is based on assumptions about ethnicity, race or appearance”.
The definition includes “engaging in unlawful discrimination where the relevant conduct, including the creation or use of practices and biases within institutions, is intended to disadvantage Muslims in public and economic life”.
However, the response did not fully calm concerns.
Antiracism campaigner Roger Kline wrote in HSJ that Lord Mann’s review “is heavily focused on antisemitism but, without explanation, hardly mentions Islamophobia”. He added: “The review spends many words seeking to define antisemitism, but does not define Islamophobia or racism. Surprisingly, it makes no reference to the new statutory provisions around harassment, which should frame how racism (including antisemitism and Islamophobia) is addressed in the NHS.”
The British Islamic Medical Association met with Lord Mann last month to raise its concerns.
A statement released by the organisation after the meeting said: “The report focuses on antisemitism. It gestures at other forms of racism without equivalent evidence or proposed intervention. This is inadequate. We called for a broader government commission with the same rigour applied to all forms of NHS workforce discrimination to address the decades of systemic workforce inequities.”
It also claimed: “Jewish doctors are the most likely of any faith group to reach senior posts. Muslim doctors are the least likely to pass postgraduate assessments. Lord Mann’s report presents only one side of that picture. A complete review would have included both.”
The government’s response also said:
- The NHS will adopt the NHS Race and Health Observatory’s principles to guide its anti-racism strategy; and
- It is seeking to consult on updating NHS data collection standards to include Jewish and Sikh as distinct identities.
The NHS Staff Standards and NHS Management and Leadership Framework are set to be published soon, setting out minimum expectations for staff conduct within the health service.
Ministers have committed to providing an initial progress update on this by October and a detailed formal report within 12 months of Lord Mann’s review being published.