Vaccination and Screening Leadership Bulletin, 30 October 2025
Dear Colleagues,
Please find below the latest update from the Vaccination and Screening Leadership Bulletin.
Kindly share this information with relevant colleagues and sample takers.
If you have any queries regarding this update, please get in touch directly with the relevant programme team contact.
- eLearning For Healthcare training update
On behalf of Alison Cowie, Head of Cervical Screening Operations.
The Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) team has been working diligently to implement several important updates to the NHS Cervical Screening Programme elearning for healthcare (elfh) training sessions. These include changes to screening intervals, the introduction of the transgender and non-binary opt-in, and broader enhancements to the programme.
In parallel, the TEL team is moving the training to a new platform and ensuring full compliance with Government Digital Standards (GDS), which are vital for delivering digital services that are user-centred, efficient, and accessible. This commitment ensures that the training remains inclusive and user-friendly for all participants.
As a result, these updates have taken longer to complete than initially anticipated and we are aware of feedback you may have received raising concerns about this. We are working closely with the TEL team and are aiming to have all sessions fully updated over the coming months. In the meantime, a message will be sent from elfh to all registered users to explain that updates are underway.
To sample taker providers: published national programme guidance is providing the correct information. The NHS Cervical Screening Programme webinar held on 12 June 2025 included information on the policy changes and is available on Futures.
- New British Sign Language (BSL) signed content on GOV.UK NHS Breast and NHS Cervical Screening Programmes
On behalf of Alison Cowie, Head of Cervical Screening Operations and Emma O’Sullivan, Pathway Implementation Lead – Breast Screening.
To help increase the accessibility of our screening programme information, new British Sign Language (BSL) videos have been developed and are now available on GOV.UK for both the NHS Breast Screening Programme and NHS Cervical Screening Programme. Based on the ‘Your guide to’ screening programme leaflets, these videos cover information on how the individual screening programmes work, who we offer screening to and why, what to expect at your appointment and with your results. They are available at:
- NHS Breast Screening Programme – British Sign Language (BSL) signed content: Taking part in NHS breast screening – GOV.UK
- NHS Cervical Screening Programme – British Sign Language (BSL) signed content: Taking part in NHS cervical screening – GOV.UK
The videos complement existing accessible information for both screening programmes, including easy read guide BSP and easy read guide CSP and translations of the ‘Your guide to’ leaflets in 30 languages.
- Screening Workforce forum update
On behalf of David Warner, Head of Workforce Transformation.
The NHS England Screening Workforce Forum meets monthly to support screening programme managers’ sharing of workforce management experience and best practice. This includes areas such as staff resourcing, training and development, capacity management, staff retention, managing change, and workforce identity and culture.
At the October session, we heard from bowel screening programme managers (Sarah Morgan, Natalie Wilding and Lorraine Gorman) about their collaborative development of a capacity and demand management tool for their service. Their presentation, which outlined the challenges, explained their work and provided a demonstration of their Excel based management tool, led to an engaging discussion about the tool’s utility across the bowel screening service and its adaptability to other screening programmes. The opportunity to include the tool as an example of good practice in a bowel cancer screening programme manager and a lead specialist screening practitioner (SSP) induction pack (being developed by NHS England’s Screening Education Team) was widely welcomed. A recording of the forum presentation and copy of the capacity and demand management tool is available on Futures at the newly created Screening Workforce pages link.
At next month’s forum (Wednesday 26 November) we will hear from Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (Lyndsay Kinnear) about Workforce Recruitment and Retention of Imaging Staff within Breast Screening. Once again we welcome this opportunity to share workforce management experience across screening programmes and to broad participant engagement in the follow-on discussion.
The Screening Workforce Forum takes place on the fourth Wednesday of each month (11:30-12.20). If you would like to join us or have a presentation to share then please email workforce.transformation1@nhs.net.
On Behalf of the Cervical Screening Programme Commissioning Team, NHSE London.