NHS England: Microsoft 365 Copilot from trial to national rollout

Administrative work takes clinical and support staff away from patients. The government has set the NHS a target of 2% productivity growth a year in its 10 Year Health Plan, and GOV.UK reports that acute trust productivity rose 2.7% between April 2024 and March 2025.¹

A pilot gave Microsoft 365 Copilot to more than 30,000 staff across 90 NHS organizations. By October 2025 more than 50,000 NHS staff were using it, and Copilot Chat was available across the whole NHS at no additional cost.

In June 2026 NHS England and Microsoft announced an agreement to give 505,000 clinicians and support staff access to Microsoft 365 Copilot. The plan runs over 12 months, with 200,000 users in the first six, plus a training and adoption program. NHS England will build and deploy agents centrally, trusts can build their own agents with Copilot Studio, and Agent 365 provides governance. Named uses include discharge, rota and bed management work for ward clerks, minutes and templates for medical secretaries, HR, finance and procurement, and board papers and briefings.¹²

In our view, the NHS sequence suits any large public body: free Copilot Chat for everyone, a large multi-organization trial, then a phased rollout with agents built centrally and governed in one place. Letting local trusts build their own agents within that governance balances central control with local needs. The headline savings should be presented as what they are. The 43 minutes is a reported trial figure with no published method, and the hours and cost savings are projections. Many staff with light writing and email workloads may get enough from Copilot Chat without a paid license, so a role-by-role review before assigning licenses would protect the budget.