The real challenge facing the NHS in Worcestershire is not so much funding, but finding enough trained staff, according to the man who makes decisions on how services should work.

Simon Trickett is the boss - the official name is ‘accountable officer’ - at all three NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG) in the county, the groups that plan and commission health services.

Mr Trickett said: “The NHS is one of the few public services where the budget actually does go up every year. Whether it’s enough to cover the rising demand is another matter.

“But the real issue is staff - there aren’t enough trained doctors and nurses and physiotherapists, health visitors and the like. That’s what we really need

“The University of Worcester is already training nurses; when it sets up its medical school, then there’ll be a 100 new doctors a year in the county and we’ll be hoping to keep many of them here. That could be a big help.”

Clinical Commissioning Groups were set up in 2012 was to replace Primary Care Trusts – with one reason being given that PCTs were too large and unwieldy - there was just one for Worcestershire.

Mr Trickett heads up all three and has recently been appointed the accountable officer for Hereford’s CCG.

Some might ask whether, with Mr Trickett at the head of four CCGs covering two counties, time and effort has gone into making changes, only for their to be an even larger replacement for the ‘too large’ PCTs.

Mr Trickett said: “The difference is that CCGs are clinically led. The board of each one has a majority of doctors and nurses and other medical practitioners on it, so the decisions being made are being made by doctors and nurses locally.

“It’s just the ‘back office’ that works across the whole area.”