Although violence against NHS staff is not a new problem, the scale it has reached, and the pace at which it is worsening, demands renewed attention from everyone responsible for healthcare security and staff safety.
The latest national data is concerning. For NHS trusts, Integrated Care Systems, and healthcare security professionals, it raises a direct question: are your organisation’s protections, policies, and people genuinely equipped to respond?
According to the 2025 NHS Staff Survey, published by NHS England in March 2026, 14.47% of NHS staff who completed the survey experienced at least one incident of physical violence from patients, service users, relatives or other members of the public in the last 12 months. That figure represents a three-year high, and it has risen in consecutive years.
A further 25.25% of respondents reported at least one incident of harassment, bullying or abuse from patients or the public in the same period, a rate that has remained persistently high over the past few years.
The headline figures alone do not capture the full picture. Staff in mental health and learning disability trusts are more likely to experience multiple incidents of violence. In 2024, 1.9% of respondents in those settings reporting violence from patients and the public more than ten times in the past 12 months. For those working in those environments, violence has become a recurring feature of the working day.
Ambulance staff face the most exposure. According to the 2025 NHS Staff Survey, some 52% of frontline operational ambulance workers experienced at least one incident of physical violence. That figure makes the ambulance sector a significant outlier, and a sector where violence prevention demands specific, targeted intervention rather than a generic policy response.
As well as the impact on people, the financial cost of NHS workplace violence has been formally assessed. Research by Liverpool John Moores University, presented to UNISON’s health conference in April 2025, estimated that violence in the NHS is costing approximately £1.36 billion per year, when considering sickness absence, occupational health costs, agency and overtime expenditure, and the cost of medical treatment and rehabilitation for injured staff.
Sickness presenteeism alone, where staff continue working when they should be absent, was calculated to cost nearly £600 million annually in productivity losses.
Alongside this, NHS Resolution’s thematic review of workplace violence claims, published in October 2024, analysed more than 5,000 claims and found the total cost of closed cases reached £61.4 million. These are direct costs to the NHS litigation budget, arising from incidents that should, in many cases, have been preventable.
Now, more than ever, structured, professional investment in healthcare security is desperately needed.
Survey data captures the experiences of staff who choose to respond. The picture from recorded incident data is, if anything, even more startling. Freedom of Information requests submitted to 89 NHS trusts in England by the Royal College of Nursing found 4,054 incidences of physical violence against staff in 2024, compared with 2,093 in 2019, representing a near doubling in five years.
The RCN’s analysis linked rising violence to systemic pressures, including extended A&E waits. The inference is significant for healthcare security professionals: the factors driving violence in NHS settings are not directly within the control of security teams, but the structures for detecting, de-escalating, and responding to incidents are.
There is also a persistent under-reporting problem. The Nuffield Trust notes that the true scale of violence in the NHS is probably higher than survey and incident data indicates, because staff lose confidence in reporting processes or come to treat violence as an accepted occupational hazard. Neither outcome is acceptable, and both have implications for how security and risk management frameworks are designed and embedded.
Healthcare providers are not operating in a voluntary environment on this issue. It is a contractual requirement that organisations providing NHS services in England implement the Violence Prevention and Reduction Standard, and a legal requirement under Health and Safety legislation that NHS employers protect the health, safety and wellbeing of their employees, including a general duty of care to protect staff from work-related violence.
In December 2024, NHS England published a refreshed Violence Prevention and Reduction Standard, updated from the previous 2021 version. Developed with the Social Partnership Forum, alongside integrated care systems and NHS organisations, the standard encourages a public health, trauma-informed approach to preventing and reducing violence and understanding the root causes of distress.
The standard now delivers a risk-based framework that supports employers to create a safe and secure working environment for NHS staff, and employers can assess themselves across seven domains using a red, amber and green rating to identify areas to action and measure progress over time.
Compliance with the VPR Standard requires capable, informed leadership within healthcare security functions, and a workforce that understands both the legal framework and the practical tools available to them.
The data, the legislation, and the financial analysis all point in the same direction. Healthcare security management has moved from a peripheral function to a strategic priority within NHS trusts and Integrated Care Systems.
The role of the NHS Security Management Specialist or Local Security Management Specialist has never been more demanding. They are expected to navigate a complex legal and policy framework, design proportionate protective security measures, manage incident investigations, lead on violence prevention strategy, and coordinate with clinical teams, the police, and trust leadership simultaneously.
The gap between what these professionals are expected to do and the formal accredited training available to develop those capabilities is one that healthcare organisations cannot afford to leave unaddressed.
Ubique’s Accredited Healthcare Security Management Specialist (AHSMS) course, Level 5, was designed specifically to address this gap. Covering the Violence Prevention and Reduction Standard, NHS legal and policy frameworks, incident investigation, protective security strategy, and threat assessment, it equips security professionals with the knowledge and practical tools to lead effectively in complex healthcare environments.
The course is accredited by SFJ Awards and the CPD Standards Office, earning 134 CPD points on completion, and is endorsed by IPSA and the IAHSS UK Chapter. It is the only Level 5 course covering the full AHSMS curriculum, delivered through a blended learning model combining five days of classroom instruction with structured distance learning, or as a fully online e-learning option for those who need flexibility.
If the data above reflects the environment your security team operates in every day, the question is not whether training like this is necessary. It is whether your organisation can afford to operate without it.
