Latest figures show that there were 124,000 vacancies across the NHS at the last count, 13,000 more than at the same time last year.

Miriam Deakin, NHS Providers director of policy and strategy, said:

"While the recent downward trend is a move in the right direction, the NHS is nowhere near out of the woods yet. Severe staff shortages persist.

"We still have thousands more vacancies across the NHS than at this time last year, which means extra pressure on staff battling with ever-growing demand and increasing workloads as they pull out all the stops to cut waiting lists and see patients as quickly as possible.

"The government's long overdue, fully funded national workforce plan for the NHS can't come soon enough.”