The government has withdrawn plans for 1,000 additional specialty training posts for resident doctors in England after the British Medical Association refused to call off a six-day strike, escalating a long-running NHS dispute over pay and jobs.
The walkout by resident doctors, formerly known as junior doctors, is still due to run from 7am on Tuesday 7 April until 6.59am on Monday 13 April. The decision to pull the extra posts came after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer gave the union 48 hours to suspend the action or lose the jobs package attached to the latest offer.
Ministers had presented the training places as part of a broader package aimed at improving pay and career progression. In the Commons on 26 March, Health Secretary Wes Streeting said resident doctors would receive an average uplift of 4.9% this year, made up of a 3.5% headline rise and other structural changes.
Streeting said starting pay for resident doctors was now nearly £12,000 higher than four years ago, while the lowest-paid foundation doctors would receive increases of between 6.2% and 7.1%.
The 1,000 extra posts were due to be available from the April 2026 recruitment round. They were intended to expand access to specialty training at a time when many doctors say competition for places has left them stuck in non-training roles and uncertain about their long-term careers in the NHS.
According to NHS England, the BMA’s Resident Doctors Committee rejected the latest package and did not put it to members in a wider vote. The government then followed through on its warning to withdraw the additional training places once the strike notice remained in force.
The dispute, which began in 2023, has been driven by complaints over the loss of pay in real terms and by growing concern over bottlenecks in specialist training. The BMA has argued that the latest headline rise does not go far enough after years of below-inflation settlements, and that the workforce crisis cannot be solved without a bigger increase in training capacity.
Ministers say the package was designed to address both pressures. Government statements described it as a way of boosting pay, expanding career opportunities and putting more money into doctors’ pockets.
By making the extra posts conditional on the strike being suspended, ministers signalled that they were no longer prepared to offer further concessions while industrial action went ahead. The withdrawal also raises fresh uncertainty for doctors who had expected the additional posts to form part of the spring recruitment round.
The row over training posts has become more prominent in recent months as doctors raised concerns about job security as well as pay. Parliament recently passed the Medical Training (Prioritisation) Act 2026, which gives UK-trained doctors priority for specialist roles, but doctors’ groups have said the central problem remains the shortage of places rather than who gets first access to them.
NHS England confirmed last week that it was planning for industrial action and warned that the timing of the stoppage, close to the Easter holiday period, and the shorter notice would make contingency planning harder for hospitals. In guidance to local NHS leaders, it said previous strikes had allowed the service to maintain about 95% of activity, though only “at a cost”.
Hospitals are continuing to prepare for disruption, with trusts expected to redeploy consultants and other senior clinicians, prioritise urgent and emergency care, and review planned operations and outpatient work. Patients have been told to continue seeking urgent treatment as normal, but some non-urgent appointments are expected to be postponed.
Previous rounds of industrial action have already caused widespread disruption across the NHS, with large numbers of appointments and procedures delayed as trusts put emergency cover in place. The April stoppage will be the latest in a succession of strikes by resident doctors since March 2023, despite renewed talks after Labour came to power in 2024.
There was no immediate indication late on Wednesday whether either side would reopen talks before the strike begins next week. For now, the industrial action is set to go ahead, the 1,000 additional training posts have been removed from the government’s offer, and negotiations appear stalled rather than formally ended.