Nurses: Temporary Employment

(asked on 17th December 2014) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many nurses working in NHS hospitals were agency staff in each year from 2010.


Answered by
Dan Poulter Portrait
Dan Poulter
This question was answered on 8th January 2015

The Department does not collect data on how many doctors working in National Health Service hospitals were employed as agency locums nor how many midwives and nurses working in NHS hospitals were agency staff.

Following the Francis[1] report many trusts increased their spend on temporary staffing to meet safe staffing levels.

The Department expects trusts to have a strong grip on their finances, and manage their contract and agency[2] staffing spend responsibly through effective and efficient workforce planning and management.


[1] http://www.midstaffspublicinquiry.com/

[2]The definition of Contract / Agency staff is: “Agency” employee payments for the employment of staff where the staff remain employees of the agency and “Contract staff” where the NHS trust has control over numbers and qualifications of staff (in contrast to a service obtained under contract) .

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