Somerset is struggling to recruit new health staff as more people choose to work part-time or leave the area.

One in four people employed within front-line health services in Somerset are currently aged 55 or over – from acute and community hospitals to GPs and carers.

With no university and limited access to public transport, the county has struggled to retain young people, and is relying on recruiting from elsewhere in the UK or abroad to prevent staff shortages.

A report on staffing issues came before the Somerset health and well-being board in Taunton on Thursday (January 16).

Helen Stapleton, who leads up the county's sustainability and transformation plan, said recruiting new staff was becoming more difficult across the board.

She said in her written report: "Currently around 25 per cent of all our current hospital, community, and primary and social care staff are over 55 years old.

"Patterns of working are changing with an increase in part-time or portfolio roles, and where there has been expansion in new service areas (e.g. in mental health services), this has attracted existing staff to migrate from traditional areas, leaving gaps.

"Taken together, this means that we are relying on bringing people in from outside Somerset to make up for normal turnover, and this has become more difficult particularly for large workforce groups."

In the last 12 months, nearly 200 nurses have been recruited from outside of the UK in order to maintain current staffing levels at Yeovil Hospital and Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton.

Councillor Janet Keen said she had reservations about recruiting medical staff from the developing world, on the basis of countries like the Philippines having a greater need.

She said: "We are trying to recruit from the developing world. Their needs are greater than ours. I have a real ethical problem with that."

Somerset has increased its overall number of GPs in the past 12 months, bucking national trends.

However, the actual number of sessions they work – known as the participation rate – is going down, as more and more GPs opt to work part-time.

Ms Stapleton said: "Our current GP workforce is getting older and we will face significant retirement losses in the next five to ten years.

"The latest data indicates that 41 per cent of Somerset's current GPs are aged 50 and over, and 25 per cent of current GPs are aged 55 and over.

"Somerset is not attracting enough newly qualified GPs to make up this shortfall.

"Not all training places are filled and of those trainees who do train in Somerset, many choose to move to less rural areas on qualifying."

The Somerset Clinical Commissioning Group has been running several initiatives to encourage GPs to train and remain in Somerset, including more flexible working arrangements for newly qualified doctors.

But in the long run, Ms Stapleton said the health service would need to be reformed to ensure GPs were only seeing those who needed their services.

She said: "We need to make sure each patient sees the right healthcare professional at the right time to meet their need.

"General practices are already employing an increasing range of skilled professional roles to increase their workforce capacity to meet future demand.

"To date, workforce development initiatives in primary care have been largely reactive and opportunistic – moving forwards we will develop a more coherent strategy for delivering a primary care workforce, with the right skills in the right numbers."