THE county’s MPs have met with ministers to push for the government to end its refusal to pay to train doctors at the region’s new medical school.

The University of Worcester’s Three Counties Medical School in Hylton Road, Worcester, will be opening its doors for the first time in September but shockingly without any government-funded places despite a chronic doctor shortage across Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire.

The Department for Health and Social Care keeps a strict cap on the number of university medical places it funds and has so far ignored appeals from the region’s health trusts and hospitals as well as Conservative MPs to stump up the money for students to move and train in Worcester.

Health bosses across Worcestershire and Herefordshire, who say they are spending £70m a year on agency staff because of the lack of doctors, as well as Gloucestershire have pooled together to put forward the money for 20 domestic students, who will start their first year of medical school alongside 28 international students, when this would usually be paid for by the government through Health Education England.

Worcester MP Robin Walker alongside fellow county MPs, Nigel Huddleston, Harriet Baldwin and Rachel Maclean, who represent Mid Worcestershire, West Worcestershire and Redditch, and Sir Bill Wiggin from Herefordshire, Richard Graham and Sir Geoffrey Clifton Brown from Gloucestershire, all met with health minister Will Quince to push for the government to start funding places as soon as possible.

Millions have already been poured into the new medical school by the government to get it built but the lack of a single funded space means the building will be opening having drawn on £1.7 million from local NHS resources to support students.

Mr Walker said: “Getting funded places for doctors to train locally will be a win for retention and recruitment of much-needed doctors in our area.

“There are major long-term challenges across the three counties which this medical school will help to meet and I am proud that the Government has already delivered much-needed investment in its facilities.

“The true benefit of that investment will only be realised once the funded places are confirmed.

“It is a great credit to our local NHS that every trust is supportive of this and that they have put real money into making sure the first cohort of students at the medical school can include local students, but this money should not be having to come from local NHS resources.

“I will keep pressing the case for funded places and I am hopeful that the hotly anticipated long-term workforce plan, something the Chancellor pressed for as chair of the health select committee, will deliver them.”