Resident doctors vote YES in re-ballot
Following their most recent round of strike action in December 2025 and a rejection of the Government’s latest offer, resident doctors have returned a decisive ‘yes’ result in the latest re-ballot.
This result unites all resident doctors, including FY1s, under one strong mandate as we continue the fight for jobs and pay.
- Number of individuals who were entitled to vote in the ballot: 54,432
- Number of votes cast in the ballot: 28,598
- Votes cast in the ballot as a percentage of individuals who were entitled to vote: 52.54%
- Number of spoilt or otherwise invalid voting papers returned: 17
Result of voting
- Yes: 26,696 (93.40%)
- No: 1,885 (6.60%)
Why this result matters
While we welcome the Medical Training (Prioritisation) Bill making its way through Parliament, we still need more specialty training places. Otherwise, thousands of UK graduates will continue to be rejected from specialty training each year.
In addition, the Government has proposed a substantive real terms pay cut in 2026: this is on top of resident pay already being down by more than a fifth compared to 2008.
With their ability to strike protected for another six months, resident doctors have secured crucial leverage.
We will not back down until the Government wakes up to the scale of the crisis over a lack of specialty training places and pay.
The specialty training places crisis explained
After completing their first two years as a foundation doctor, residents go on to train in specialities – from neurology to surgery, paediatrics to emergency medicine.
This training can last from three to eight years, depending on the specialty. Resident doctors go through a competitive application process before they can start their specialty training programme. Some programmes require doctors to complete a two to three year core training programme before re-applying to higher specialty training.
However, poor workforce planning by successive governments means there aren’t enough specialty training places for them to go to, stunting their careers and depriving the NHS of the staff it needs to get down waiting lists.
We’ve seen how serious these bottlenecks are. This year in the UK, there were nearly 40,000 applicants for training posts.
That means we have resident doctors – both fresh out of foundation training and later in their careers - who have spent years studying and want to work in the NHS, unable to find a job.
The Government has recently announced new legislation to prioritise UK graduates, but this will not fully solve the jobs crisis. We are also concerned about the effect on doctors with significant NHS experience who originally qualified abroad. Find out more in our explainer.
