The Manpower Committee of the College has recently expressed concern about the apparent slow-down in the rate of expansion of the Consultant grade in Psychiatry. It has been both College policy and the policy of the Department of Health and Social Security to expand the numbers of Consultants in adult psychiatry.

The Department has issued two guidelines. In March 1972 guidelines on minimum standards in hospitals for the mentally ill were issued (in DS/86/72), in which a minimum standard of 0.45 Consultants to 100 in-patients was recommended. This figure was well below the then average of 0.60 Consultants per 100 in-patients in hospitals and units for the mentally ill in England, but at some hospitals the current ratio was much less. The minimum standard of 0.45 which it was hoped would be achieved by 1974 fell well short of what would be needed to remove inequalities between hospitals, but it took account of the prospective number of additional Consultants likely to be available in the two years to 1974 and was intended to have the effect of concentrating a due proportion of new Consultant posts in the hospitals which were most short-staffed.