Health go £7m over budget on agency staff this year

Wednesday 18 November 2020

Heath has gone more than £7m over budget this year on recruiting and employing agency staff.

The department says that this is because it has used more locum agency staff this year because of the covid pandemic, and also “to support an expansion of the workforce while permanent recruitment continues to fill vacancies."

It says that this is a common approach across all healthcare providers to deal with an international shortage of qualified nurses and “allied health professionals” such as dietitians, physiotherapists and radiographers.

However, it adds that roles are also being filled by new locally trained nurses.

Replying to a written question by Deputy Geoff Southern, Health Minister Richard Renouf revealed that going £7.2m over budget between January and October this year represented a 6% overspend. 

Pictured: There is an international shortage of nurses at the moment, which is making it difficult for Health to recruit.

By far the greatest need was for medical agency staff, whose costs were £3.4m, or 17%, over budget. The budget for ‘civil servant’ agency staff was £1m, or 5.3%, over, while allied health professionals cost £1.2m, or 7.4%, more than budgeted. 

By comparison, for the whole of 2019, Health went £3.8m, or 2.7%, over on its agency staff budget. 

Offering a snapshot on the recruitment challenges with Health, Deputy Renouf said that there were 312 total vacancies in August, compared to 194 at the same time last year. The staff group with the highest number of spaces was ‘manual labour’, with 131 vacancies in August compared to 40 the year before. 

There were a total of 1,432 staff in post in August compared to 1,481 in the same month last year. However, there were 1,759 funded posts in August (1,673 posts in August 2019).

Deputy Renouf said: “Locum and agency staff can attract premium expenditure above a permanent role budget. 

“The department operates rigorous governance and financial control in respect of the authorisation of agency and locum expenditure, with full consideration to ensuring staffing levels are enough to meet the needs of the service that it is providing.”