01.08.15
Nearly 20% of trusts spend more than a tenth of total staff budget on agency
Nearly a fifth of NHS trusts have spent more than a tenth of their total staff budget on agency, an NHE investigation has revealed.
NHE sent freedom of information (FoI) requests to all of the trusts who sent copies of their draft accounts to Monitor and the NHS TDA. Of our 240 requests, we got 176 replies – a return rate of 72%. The 176 respondents included community, ambulance, mental health and acute trusts and FTs.
We found that 30 trusts out of 176 respondents (with the exception of three who refused to divulge their total staff bill because it was exempt under section 22 of the FoI Act), or 17.3%, had spent more than a tenth of their staff budget on agency.
Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust, which provides community and in-patient services to almost a million people in Barnet, Hammersmith & Fulham, Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster, spent £29.3m on agency staff – though did not break this down by staff type. This represented 21.2% of the trust’s £138m total staffing bill.
However, Avon & Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust, which spent 19.9% of its total staffing bill on agency supply, did provide a breakdown. The mental health trust spent £13.25m of its £66.54m staffing bill on agency, with the two largest spend areas being dominated by medical and nursing.
During the 2014-15 financial year, the trust had planned to spend £698,179 on agency nurses – it spent £9.8m. It overspent similarly on medical staff, managing to spend £2.2m when it thought it would need to spend £338,139.
NHE’s full FoI investigation into agency spend appears in the July/August 2015 edition of the magazine.