NHS spent £3.2bn on agency nurses in three years, says RCN

“This is yet another false economy when it comes to NHS spending”

Nicola Ranger

The union, which collected the figures via a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, found that 182 trusts across England spent £3.2bn between 2020 and 2022.

This £3.2bn was used to fill gaps in rotas for nursing and other staff in hospitals across the country, with gaps normally emerging due to staff absence or vacancies, noted the RCN.

In London alone, hospitals spent £630m on agency staff, compared to £109m in the North of England, according to the college’s calculations.

The RCN’s figures also suggest spending is on the rise. In 2020, the 182 trusts that submitted FOI responses showed a total of £800m spent but this figure rose by 63% to £1.3bn in 2022.

RCN chief nurse Professor Nicola Ranger accused ministers of  getting “their priorities wrong”, warning that trusts were being “forced” to “squander” billions on agency staff.

Meanwhile, at the same time, Professor Ranger claimed that the government was only providing “miserly funding for fair pay and nurse education”.

The RCN argued that three-quarters of NHS vacancies could have been filled by the £3.2bn agency spend over the three year period – or 30,956 permanent full-time nurses paid at the top of Agenda for Change band 5 (£34,581 per year).

This money, it calculated, could also have trained 86,000 new nurses.

The union said under-funding had created a “recruitment crisis” at hospital trusts and that this was why so many agency staff had been hired.

Instead, the RCN said sums of money this large should be put into improving the working conditions of nurses.

Professor Ranger said: “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,” she added.

Agency spending has also been highlighted elsewhere in the UK.

Scottish Labour, earlier this year, claimed £26m had been spent on agency staff in three months to fill workforce gaps across the NHS in Scotland. These figures included non-nursing staff.

Meanwhile, a new framework aimed at ending the use of agencies, which have been charging very high fees in Northern Ireland, was put into place by the country’s devolved Department of Health.

An RCN spokesperson added: “While some in the nursing profession prefer the flexibility of working as agency nurses, massive spending on regularly staffing shifts points to a need for the government to do more to attract people into working in the NHS.

“This must start with fair pay,” they said.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said: "These statistics cover the Covid pandemic when the NHS was under huge additional pressure and staff sickness rates were exceptionally high.

“While temporary staffing allows the NHS to meet fluctuations in demand, we are controlling spending by capping hourly pay and prioritising NHS staff when shifts need filling.

“We have recruited more than 50,000 extra nurses compared to 2019 – hitting our target early – and the Long Term Workforce plan is ensuring the NHS has the staff it needs over the next 15 years so that patients continue to receive the best possible care.”