Cornwall Training Hub Wins a National Award!

Cornwall Training Hub has been judged as providing ‘Staffing Solution of The Year’ by the Health Service Journal at their annual Partnership Awards 2025.  The Hub’s ‘Practice Manager Development Programme’ was awarded the accolade, despite intense national competition, in recognition of an outstanding dedication to improving healthcare and effective collaboration with the NHS.

 This is a recruitment solution with a difference. Faced with a workforce challenge in Practice Management, Cornwall Training Hub, in partnership with an existing Practice Manager, has developed a bespoke ‘Foundations in Practice Management’ education programme to grow its own workforce supply. This is a unique programme, the first of its kind nationally, that it is creating a pipeline to ensure resilience and stability in General Practice in Cornwall.

The HSJ felt that we had addressed the challenge of an aging and isolated workforce with a clear innovative approach, our work brought people together, improved support and created new opportunities for targeted training.

The HSJ Partnership Awards provide a high-profile platform which can help to shape the future of the new Integrated Health and Care System, and the event was attended by senior representatives from the NHS, and both the private and third sector as well as key players from non-clinical backgrounds.

The judging panel was made up of a diverse panel of 70+ highly influential and respected figures within the healthcare community. All finalists and winners were judged against five clear criteria: ambition; outcome; spread; value, and involvement.   The judges were impressed by the solution’s ambition, clear potential for national expansion, and focus on reducing isolation and improving outcomes.

"Nicola Davies, Practice Manager Ambassador said, “We’re just so thrilled to have won this award which really endorses all our efforts in training our future managers in Primary Care. All our team is so committed to delivering the Foundation in Practice Management course – and that’s why we do what we do. This award is the icing on the cake, as we all felt so proud just to have been nominated alongside so many other inspiring and deserving projects.”

 Liz Symons, Workforce Development Lead at Cornwall Training Hub continued: “We are grateful to have been able to fly the flag for Cornwall and celebrate the fantastic work we do in partnership with practices, and our local partners. We’d also like to extend our thanks to Samantha Vincent and Jo Redgrave from Crisp Training who played an important role in this award too. To pick up a prestigious HSJ Partnership Award is such a huge achievement. We look forward to building on this success and taking our learning into future projects and partnerships.”

Laura Wheeler, Director of Integrated Primary Care from Kernow Health commented “We understood what our General Practices in Cornwall needed and developed a solution to ‘grow our own’ Practice Managers. This award recognises General Practice as an innovator, especially when up against so many secondary care trusts; it acknowledges a practical, sustainable solution which is tangibly helping General Practice and has the potential to be modelled nationally, to help improve outcomes for GP Practices across the country.”

 You can find out more about the Practice Manager Development Programme here.

The winners were selected following a rigorous two-stage judging process and the full list of Winners can be found at Winners 2025 | HSJ Partnership Awards