22 September 2025
By Daniel Pye
The government has admitted that competition ratios for specialty training places are "unfair" after new figures revealed "staggering" competition for some posts, with one field attracting almost 100 applications for a single position.
The data exposes what medical leaders have called a "crisis facing medical training," with an overall competition ratio for all fields of seven applications for every specialty training post across England—up from 4.7 last year and more than triple the 2019 level.