YORK Hospital Trust spent £27.4 million on temporary doctors and nurses last year - twice as much as the previous year.

It has also emerged the trust paid an hourly rate of £131.16 for a temporary nurse working in intensive care and £200 an hour to an agency for a consultant in neurology.

Spending increased from £7.9 million on agency and bank nurses in 2014/15 to £13.8 million over the last year - an amount which could pay the salaries and costs of 394 experienced nurses.

Meanwhile, £5.6 million was spent on agency doctors working for York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in 2014/15, rising to £13.6 million over the last year.

York Press:

The trust said recruitment to certain roles remains “extremely challenging”, mainly because of insufficient numbers of training places in higher education. A shortage of staff has pushed up the rate agencies are able to charge.

Glenn Turp, the regional director for the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) in Yorkshire & the Humber, said the rise in spending on temporary staff was “entirely predictable”.

He said: “Increasingly hospitals are spending a large portion of their over-stretched budgets on temporary nursing staff. Whilst we welcome the decision by Trusts like York to put their patients before their financial ‘bottom line’, the NHS and Government must act now to invest in its workforce and take long term workforce planning seriously”.

York Press:

The figures released under the Freedom of Information Act showed the highest rate paid to a temporary nurse at the York trust in the last 18 months was £131.16 an hour for a Good Friday shift in intensive care.

The RCN said the salary of a band 5 nurse with about five years' experience would typically be just over £28,000 - gross pay of about £14.40 an hour - but that associated costs such as pensions would cost hospitals £35,000 a year.

The highest rate paid to a temporary doctor in the past 18 months was £200 an hour for a consultant in neurology.

York Press: York Hospital where 110 members of staff could be moved down a pay grade

Rachael Maskell, MP for York Central, said the NHS is in crisis due to the Government’s decisions. She said this includes the dispute with junior doctors, which has led to poor morale within the NHS and problems with retaining staff.

She said: “It’s deeply concerning that this is clearly having a consequence on doctors. If you haven’t got the workforce locally you will have to pay for agency staff because you have to run a safe service.”

As nursing bursaries are being cut and future nursing students will have to take out loans, which will see them graduate with debts of up to £52,000, staffing problems will be made even more difficult, Ms Maskell said.

“Labour did not have this problem because we respected the workforce that do an amazing job for people,” she said.

“Instead of wasting money on agencies why don’t we support local people into training and into jobs in the NHS?”

Since April, £4.1 million has been spent on bank and agency nurses at the York Hospital trust and £3.8 million on agency doctors.

Polly McMeekin, deputy director of workforce at York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, said: “In recent months agency spend across the Trust has reduced, due in part to the support that NHS Improvement is giving all NHS organisations in relation to clear guidance on reducing agency spend and in part to employment initiatives. These initiatives include developing new roles (for example, Advanced Care Practitioners) and continuing with international recruitment.”

Last November, the government introduced a cap on sums paid to locum workers, but the limit is regularly being breached nationally, it has been reported.

Julian Sturdy, Conservative MP for York Outer, said: “I accept that agency staff can play a vital role in the NHS to provide immediate cover and ensure hospitals are not understaffed at extremely short notice. However, over-reliance upon the services of agencies is expensive and does not deliver the best deal for taxpayers.

“The Government has introduced tough new financial controls to cut down on waste in the NHS, including caps for agency staff, and these intend to ensure that staffing costs are proportionate and deliver value for money in the years ahead. If this is not the case then I shall be pushing for more action to be taken.”