East Lancashire hospitals spent £39.5m on agency nurses

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) gathered figures under the Freedom of Information Act from 182 NHS trusts on spending on agency nurses, plus nursing staff such as assistants and support workers.

The response exposed that £3 billion has been spent on agency staff in England between 2020 to 2022 which is equivalent to the salaries of almost 31,000 full time nurses.

In East Lancashire alone, more than £41.2 million was spent on agency staff with £39.5m on registered nurses, which the trust highlights was partly due to challenges caused by the pandemic.

Research by London Economics for the RCN estimates the cost of training a nurse is £37,287 meaning the money spent on agency nurses in East Lancashire could have trained around 1,060 new nurses.

The highest amount spent during the three years was £16.4 million in 2021, with £15.8 million on registered nurses and £621,237 on other healthcare professionals.

The amount spent on agency staff dropped to £14.5 million the following year, although it is still a surge from the £10.2 million in 2020.

ELHT board papers reveal that agency pay makes up 3.8 per cent of the overall salaries in 2023, which is slightly above their target of 3.7 per cent.

Matt Ireland, deputy director of People and Culture at East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “We only ever employ temporary colleagues through agencies as a last resort when shortages of the right people with the right skills, caused by sickness and other unexpected absences, threaten to impact our ability to support our patients and deliver safe, personal and effective care."

The cost of nursing bank and agency per month in 2023 (Image: ELHT)

On a more positive note, agency staff spending has dropped significantly. In March 2022, the trust spent £1.8 million on agency staff, which plummeted to around £800,000 in March this year.

Although agency staff spending has increased over the months to around £970,000 in September, it’s a significant decrease from the £1.8 million spent in September last year.

Matt Ireland continued: “Significant work has been done to reduce the amount of money spent on using agencies and we are now starting to see the results of that activity.

"This has included a significant reduction in the number of nurse vacancies at ELHT through ongoing recruitment and continuing to develop our own internal bank of colleagues who are willing to pick up shifts as required.”

The RCN is calling on the government to abolish tuition fees for prospective nursing students and provide loan forgiveness for those who have already paid for their education.

RCN chief nurse professor Nicola Ranger, said: “Ministers have got their priorities wrong – forcing trusts to squander billions on agency staff while they provide miserly funding for fair pay and nurse education.

“With cuts to nurse education and maintaining unfair pay levels, ministers are choosing to spend the money on much higher private agency bills instead, this is yet another false economy when it comes to NHS spending.

“This should act as a wake-up call. The government must give nursing staff and patients the investment and respect they deserve. Not acting now will mean even more patients on waiting lists and the crisis in the nursing workforce deepening further.”