Fighting for their future: student nurses protesting outside Mayday Hospital this morning, after they were told none of them would be offered jobs after they finish their training course
As government launches its 10-year plan for the NHS, newly qualified nurses are being ‘abandoned’ and ‘neglected’ and turned down for jobs at the hospital where they have spent the past three years training
Around 100 student nurses staged a demonstration outside Mayday Hospital today, protesting at being abandoned by the local NHS Trust, which is refusing to offer jobs to any of them at the end of their three-year nursing degree course.
Croydon University Hospital, as it is sometimes known, is in the middle of a recruitment freeze, while according to the student nurses it is also closing wards to save money. The A&E department, meanwhile, is having to deal with an average of 450 patients daily.
“This is deeply alarming,” the student nurses say. “How is it that the largest borough in London is so chronically underfunded?”
The student nurses say that they have been “neglected, undervalued, and overwhelmed after dedicating years to academic and clinical training”.
The demo on London Road, Thornton Heath outside the hospital came just a day after Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his health secretary launched their “10-year plan” for the NHS. “We can’t even plan our futures for the next 10 days,” said one of the student nurses.
“We’ve been saddled with tens of thousands of pounds of student debt, and now the trust that runs the hospital where we’ve worked and studied for the past three years has just dumped us and told us we’re not wanted.”
In the past, all those in a year group of student nurses would be offered jobs by the Croydon NHS Trust. This year, there are 91 in the year group. Not one has been offered a job, as the Trust seeks to make drastic cuts to its spending.
Men with a plan: Starmer and Streeting at yesterday’s policy launch. But student nurses in Croydon don’t know if they will have jobs when their courses end
Today’s protest was organised by the Royal College of Nursing. The students waved banners carrying slogans “We Want Jobs”, “Fighting For Our Futures”, and “The patients need us!”
Student nurses at the well-attended protest spoke of feeling abandoned and having wasted three years of their lives.
“We want patients and the public to aware of what is happening at the Trust,” one of the student nurses told Inside Croydon.
“Why do people think the long waits in A&E are happening?”
Deborah Kelly, the Chief Nursing Officer at Croydon Health Services Trust, wrote to the student nurses recently, saying, “I fully appreciate the upset and anxiety that this uncertainty is causing.”
‘Deep regret’: Deborah Kelly, Croydon’s chief nurse
And Kelly wrote that it is “a matter of deep regret that we are unable to offer the same level of employment opportunities to final year students here at Croydon Health Services in 2025-2026”.
The student nurses have written to all four of Croydon’s MPs, as well as to health secretary Streeting “to express our growing concerns and deep frustration about the lack of employment opportunities available to newly qualified nurses in our borough”.
The nurses wrote that, “This situation has left us feeling neglected, undervalued, and overwhelmed after dedicating years to academic and clinical training.”
They estimate that many of the “cohort class of 2022” have accumulated student debt of as much as £80,000 each through tuition fees and associated living costs, “under the promise that our hard work would lead to meaningful employment and the opportunity to contribute to our communities”.
But they add: “We are now facing an uncertain future where jobs are scarce, and support is limited.”
And their letter to the Chief Nursing Officer was clinically critical of the way they had been treated. “The communication around employment pathways for newly qualified nurses has been poor. Information is often vague or inconsistent, and many of us have been left with unanswered questions and no clear plan forward.
“While we understand that healthcare staffing is a nationwide issue, the situation in Croydon is especially dire. As one of the largest and most diverse boroughs in London, Croydon should be a place of opportunity for new nurses. Instead, we are facing barriers to employment due to budget limitations, lack of available roles, and the prioritisation of experienced hires.”
Getting their message across: the RCN is backing Croydon’s job-less, newly qualified nurses
The student nurses have caught in the middle of a 12-month job freeze at the hospital. “The irony is painful—while the healthcare system continues to suffer from understaffing, newly trained professionals like us are left on the sidelines…
“By refusing to invest in newly qualified staff, the system is pushing existing healthcare workers toward burnout… We are qualified, ready, and willing to step up and help carry the weight. Yet instead, we’re being left on the sidelines, with… no opportunity to apply the skills we’ve spent years developing…
“The long-term sustainability of the NHS depends on nurturing and retaining the next generation of nurses — not turning them away at the starting line… We are not asking for special treatment. We are asking for fairness, for opportunity and for the chance to serve the community we have trained to care for.”
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About insidecroydon
News, views and analysis about the people of Croydon, their lives and political times in the diverse and most-populated borough in London.
Based in Croydon and edited by Steven Downes. To contact us, please email inside.croydon@btinternet.com