Mile End Hospital played host to secretary for health and social care Matt Hancock MP this week as he launched the NHS’ plan to boost staffing.

The intermediate NHS People Plan sets out the immediate strategy to recruit and keep more staff, and to train them to meet new healthcare demands.

The measures include 5,700 more hospital and community placements for student nurses and boosting the number of nurses and doctors coming from overseas to work in the NHS.

The push is also using a partnership with Mumsnet -an online parenting forum - to get nurses who left the profession to come back to the NHS.

Mr Hancock visited the Tower Hamlets Centre for Mental Health at the facility, which is run by the East London NHS Foundation Trust (ELFT).

ELFT runs mental health services for Tower Hamlets and Newham.

"I am delighted that we launched the NHS People Plan at here," said Mr Hancock. "ELFT has played an important role in improving the working culture in our NHS.

"The People Plan we've launched will drive that progress - to achieve our ambition of making the NHS one of the best employers in the world."

"The interim people plan is the first step. It sets out plans to train more, hire more, and retain more staff."

He added that this push is designed to lay the foundations to grow the NHS' workforce and its ability to deliver "the highest-quality care to patients from the cradle to grave."

The Secretary for State saw around 60 staff from ELFT, Barts Health and the borough's clinical commissioning group.

Joining one of the groups, they reported why they liked working in the NHS and what would make it better.

The interim plan was developed with other figures and bodies involved in how the NHS runs like NHS managers, NHS staff unions and the British Medical Association.

Its goal is to help meet the target laid out in the NHS Long Term Plan, launched in January and setting out the organisation's strategy for the next ten years.

Among the things that need to happen to follow the plan is the training of 5,000 new GPS.