Resident doctors are to go on strike for six days from Tuesday 7 April, the day after Easter Monday, after weeks of negotiations produced a final pay offer from health secretary Wes Streeting which the British Medical Association described as “insufficient”.
The strike involves resident doctors from the Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust which operates hospitals across the county including Exeter Community Hospital in Whipton, Nightingale Hospital in Sowton and the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital in Heavitree and Wonford.
It is the fifteenth round of industrial action since March 2023 in an ongoing dispute between the BMA and the government, following a five-day strike held just before Christmas.
The BMA announced this week that its latest strike would go ahead after nearly 27,000 – 93% – of its resident doctor members voted in January to continue industrial action.
Resident doctors committee chair Jack Fletcher said: “We have been negotiating in good faith for weeks to try and end the simultaneous pay and jobs crises for resident doctors.
“Frustratingly we had been making good progress right up until the point, in the last two weeks, when the government began to shift the goalposts.”
He added, however, that the BMA was “not closing the door on talks” and remained willing to negotiate to prevent the strikes taking place.
Wes Streeting said that the BMA rejection of the deal was “enormously disappointing”.
Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital in Wonford.
The BMA campaign for increased pay began in June 2022 after a vote at its annual conference, with its first strike action beginning on 13 March 2023. Six more walkouts followed before a nine-day strike was held either side of Christmas that year, the longest strike in NHS history.
Resident doctors then took further industrial action in 2024, including going on strike a week before the July general elections.
Shortly afterwards the BMA entered negotiations with newly-appointed health secretary Wes Streeting and voted to accept the resulting pay deal, which covered 2023-24 and 2024-25, the following month.
However in July last year doctors staged another five-day walkout after they said Wes Streeting “did not go far enough” on subsequent “pay and non-pay elements”.
The latest strike is set to begin at 7am on Tuesday 7 April and end at 7am on Monday 13 April.
Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust advice is to attend planned appointments as normal unless informed otherwise.
Emergency departments and minor injury units will remain open throughout the strike but the public are advised to visit their local pharmacy or GP for medical problems that are not critical or life-threatening.
Anyone with symptoms of a respiratory infection, nausea, vomiting or diarrhoea is asked not to visit any of the trust’s hospital sites to help protect patients and staff.
Resident doctors – hospital doctors who are not consultants – make up about half of all hospital doctors in England.
