>NHS bosses are increasingly paying premium rates for agency staff to plug holes in rotas, the BBC has found.
>Spending in this area rose by 20% last year to hit £3bn in England.
>For many shifts, bosses have been so short-staffed they have been willing to breach the government pay caps for these agency workers, most of whom are doctors and nurses.
>Separate data supplied by Labour showed some NHS trusts had paid as much as £2,500 to nurses to fill shifts.
>Doctors are likely to be getting even more.
Just wanted to highlight the absolutely disgusting headline here by the BBC after nurses overwhelmingly voted for the first strike action in over 100 years.
There’s literally no way that the agency fees being paid by these NHS Trusts are being handed over directly to agency nurses.
Whilst they may be getting slightly more than the standard pay for the position they are filling on a temporary basis, literally anyone who has ever worked for a temping agency in any industry and any capacity will be able to tell you that what the company paid the agency is vastly higher than what they got paid for doing the work.
If anything, this simply highlights that what the government is/will be saying about not being able to afford to give nurses a decent parish is BS because they are using that money already for paying agency fees instead.
Edit: The BBC have since changed the headline to ‘Desperate NHS pays up to £2,500 for nursing shifts’ SMH
The problem is Agencies are still paying a lot more than NHS and private so people are leaving the NHS to work on agency so the NHS are having to pay the same people even more. Then because all the staff are agency they need more people on a shift as people are unfamiliar with the hospital/type of work they are doing.
Isn’t it funny how as soon as somone goes on strike because they can’t afford to live on their wages, the media produces stories about people who are earning way above that for the same job without the context (That the agencies are raking in most of the money)
This is what Tories want.
Rather than paying public sector staff a proper wage, they want private sector staff to be hired at eye-watering amounts, which are mostly.pocketed by their chumblies (who probably don’t pay tax).
just like at the billion dollar company i work for that has made 14 billion so far this year, instead of upping rates to incentivise people to apply they are paying agency staff nearly double what us full timers are paid, to plug the holes.
And then they moan about agency staff costs, like how out of touch with reality can you be.
2.5k a shift but using food banks when the boiler breaks!? No shame these media outlets. No nurses are being paid that! That’s more than my entire months wage as a band 7!
Has the headline changed?
>NHS pays up to £2,500 for nursing shifts
is entirely different to
>paying nurses up to £2,500 a shift
I can only say that as a non clinical contractor for several years with the NHS recently converted to permanent, I am considerably better off on the payroll even before pension contributions.
More likely paying the agency that provide the nurses that much money. Nurse will never see it. Agency will pocket it.
Absolutely impossible but Trusts should stand by their staff and NOT employ agency staff during strikes. Otherwise the strikes are bleeding then dry. Unfortunately they have a legal obligation to meet a minimum standard.
Ironically the Trust I work at doesn’t meet that minimum requirement PRE-strike.
The NURSES don’t get paid what the AGENCY gets paid.
Complete collapse of services now seems inevitable.
Probably all part of the plan and there is a tory some where associated with the agencies supplying the staff and raking the money in.
Also, I can tell you categorically that locum doctors don’t generally earn much more than locum nurses except possibly at registrar level, which is fair enough.
If they can afford to give a nurse £2,500 for one shift, then they can afford to give them a fair salary that might keep them working for the NHS
I’m sure they,d stop striking if they paid each nurse 2 shifts at that rate a year.
This has been the situation in all areas of the NHS (and basically all professional fields) for a long time.
Work as a “contractor” but never be out of work because the demand is so high. No obligation from you to do a set number of shifts, get paid a premium for the shifts you do.
I’m a doctor and this happens with us as well (more like £400 a shift not thousands). This is because the NHS pay offer is below the market rate, so people go abroad for better conditions rather than stay in the NHS. I could quit my job today and cause a gap in the rota. I guarantee there is nobody to fill it because of a supply shortage of doctors. I could then go back into the same job at £40 an hour as a long term locum.
We need to increase the attractiveness of the work to encourage the doctors we paid to train to actually stay, and to encourage good doctors from other countries to move here. Once the rota gaps are plugged the pay issue would then mostly go away because it wouldn’t be so horrifically understaffed and therefore so unpleasant to work in.
If I call out a plumber it’s a minimum £60 just to have a look, I don’t see why a doctor should be paid less than a plumber.
It’s not new. One of my friends works for the local out of hours service and accidentally saw a sheet of paper with one of the GP’s hourly rates. She was pulling in 2500/shift, did 4/week and was working through a limited company. 480k/year. This was 10 years ago.
I can only assume this is like when most self employed people tell you they make £100k+ a year. It’s true if they worked every day, every month for a whole year…but they don’t.
Odd shifts for specialists in any industry garner silly sums particularly when OHP and VAT are factored in.
I mean they even have a Doctor there saying he’s on £60-70/hour so the person doing all the hard work isn’t getting 3-4 time that.
BBC sensational headline by picking an extreme example when really the headline is NHS spending £3B on agency staff which is deplorable.
Friendly reminder that Medacs, a large agency providing healthcare staff is owned by Lord Ashcroft.
They also got handed a £350 million contract during covid.
I wonder where all those agency fees now might be going?
I will add a second comment, the pay freeze salaried NHS staff are experiencing whilst allowing exorbitant outgoings through alternative streams such as one of the ways this government aims to undermine the NHS.
If the public won’t abandon the NHS, the government will drive the staff out of it into other providers and then implement a privatised plan whilst appearing like saviours of the mess they orchestrated throughout.
If only an FOI request could get politicians and those associated to declare their international assets, but likely this will never be the case.
That’s the hypocrisy in this government rather pay scabs more then the people who kepted this country going
And I’m wondering who owns the agencies and is actually collecting the money. Agency workers get a slightly higher premium in terms of wages but less stability and benefits, this is misleading as the agency takes a hefty cut for themselves. Perhaps better staff wages would stem the flow of NHS workers who have bills to pay and so are becoming agency workers. I’ve both worked as and for a private contractor agency although not in the medical sector.
Let’s just piss money away paying the agency middle-mans markup instead of just sorting out the NHS itself.
I swear, the whole way it has been managed in the last 10+ years seems to be a complete disaster.
They pay the agency £2500 the actual nurse that turns up to do the job still gets paid 50p the agency pockets the rest
It’s really simple.
Double nurses wages. Require a five year contract after training. Stop using agency staff.
> Dr James Barson qualified four years ago. But instead of taking the traditional junior doctor route, he now solely focuses on agency work in hospitals across Lincolnshire.
>
>The reason? Pay and the flexibility. He can earn more than twice what he would get paid if he was on the NHS payroll, without the need to commit to nights and weekends.
They’re just following Conservative advice and finding better jobs and ‘Levelling up’ if they’re not happy with current conditions.
I experienced this in a weird job I somehow found myself in way back in 2016. I decided to apply for this job at a mental health hospital and ended up getting it. Job was horrible, but the money was good. Anyway I started to realise there was always a lot of new faces in the team and I naively thought they had a lot of part time staff. I then asked and realised they were agency staff getting about 100% more money per shift. So I quit and worked for the agency before getting out and going to uni.
It was genuinely crazy how much they were earning. I wasnt even a nurse (obviously), but my base pay was like £23,000 and when I went onto the agency I was earn £300 for a shift. (3 13 hour shifts a week)
Was easier going onto agency as well because I started at a hospital for sectioned teenage girls who were a handful, but when I went with the agency I was between 2 hospitals with older patients who were all darlings. Felt like robbery in all honesty.
Money for agency nurses but not the staff on their payroll. It’s a disgrace.
When I worked agency, my wages just became what they should have been if a decade of wage suppression hadn’t occurred. Then when you factor in 0 employers pension, 0 job security and 0 expenses (thanks IR35 for treating us like employees despite getting none of the benefits) it doesn’t add up to nearly as much as you’d think.
Nick triggle should be put into a cannon and directly fired into the centre of the sun.
Honestly I know a lot of nurses working bank shifts and not one of them has been offered anything close to £500 let alone this. I think this is an attempt to get the public against them.
Agency nurses aren’t on near £2500 a shift (although they’re on higher) so why the lies?
ya well that is for REJECTING MY SISTERS VISA AFTER SHE WORKED IN NHS FOR 5 YEARS, WITH ALWAYS 13-15 BEDS OF DYING PEOPLE ALL TO HERSELF.
how is brexit going?
Agency midwives are being paid £60 an hour at Nottingham University Hospitals because they are so desperate.
Not true. NHS are paying 2,500 to THIRD PARTY RECRUITMENT AGENCIES who pay pennies to the nurses. Read that again. It bairns with nurses, teachers and doctors
No, they’re paying *agencies* that much. The *agencies* are skimming a lot of money off the top of that, then they’re paying the nurses near the standard rate. Don’t fall for the greedy nurses shtick.
I qualified as a nurse in mid 90’s, under a Tory govt. Did agency work in London for a few months. I was paid three times what salaried staff were on. Some wards were staffed entirely by agency nurses because the T&Cs of salaried were so bad, that they left and then came back to same unit on agency, with fewer responsibilities for three times the pay.
It’s a death spiral, feeding itself. Make conditions so bad that people leave. Then need to meet staffing levels with agency. Agency nurses talk to salaried about their hourly rate, Salaried staff leave and join agency.
The agencies all know the pressure management are under to staff the shifts and hike their rates accordingly.
Labour came in 97 and massively invested and n staff – wages, terms etc. Over the next few years, agency nursing fell off the cliff.
36 comments
>NHS bosses are increasingly paying premium rates for agency staff to plug holes in rotas, the BBC has found.
>Spending in this area rose by 20% last year to hit £3bn in England.
>For many shifts, bosses have been so short-staffed they have been willing to breach the government pay caps for these agency workers, most of whom are doctors and nurses.
>Separate data supplied by Labour showed some NHS trusts had paid as much as £2,500 to nurses to fill shifts.
>Doctors are likely to be getting even more.
Just wanted to highlight the absolutely disgusting headline here by the BBC after nurses overwhelmingly voted for the first strike action in over 100 years.
There’s literally no way that the agency fees being paid by these NHS Trusts are being handed over directly to agency nurses.
Whilst they may be getting slightly more than the standard pay for the position they are filling on a temporary basis, literally anyone who has ever worked for a temping agency in any industry and any capacity will be able to tell you that what the company paid the agency is vastly higher than what they got paid for doing the work.
If anything, this simply highlights that what the government is/will be saying about not being able to afford to give nurses a decent parish is BS because they are using that money already for paying agency fees instead.
Edit: The BBC have since changed the headline to ‘Desperate NHS pays up to £2,500 for nursing shifts’ SMH
https://web.archive.org/web/20221111041439/https://www.bbc.com/news/health-63588959
The problem is Agencies are still paying a lot more than NHS and private so people are leaving the NHS to work on agency so the NHS are having to pay the same people even more. Then because all the staff are agency they need more people on a shift as people are unfamiliar with the hospital/type of work they are doing.
Isn’t it funny how as soon as somone goes on strike because they can’t afford to live on their wages, the media produces stories about people who are earning way above that for the same job without the context (That the agencies are raking in most of the money)
This is what Tories want.
Rather than paying public sector staff a proper wage, they want private sector staff to be hired at eye-watering amounts, which are mostly.pocketed by their chumblies (who probably don’t pay tax).
just like at the billion dollar company i work for that has made 14 billion so far this year, instead of upping rates to incentivise people to apply they are paying agency staff nearly double what us full timers are paid, to plug the holes.
And then they moan about agency staff costs, like how out of touch with reality can you be.
2.5k a shift but using food banks when the boiler breaks!? No shame these media outlets. No nurses are being paid that! That’s more than my entire months wage as a band 7!
Has the headline changed?
>NHS pays up to £2,500 for nursing shifts
is entirely different to
>paying nurses up to £2,500 a shift
I can only say that as a non clinical contractor for several years with the NHS recently converted to permanent, I am considerably better off on the payroll even before pension contributions.
More likely paying the agency that provide the nurses that much money. Nurse will never see it. Agency will pocket it.
Absolutely impossible but Trusts should stand by their staff and NOT employ agency staff during strikes. Otherwise the strikes are bleeding then dry. Unfortunately they have a legal obligation to meet a minimum standard.
Ironically the Trust I work at doesn’t meet that minimum requirement PRE-strike.
The NURSES don’t get paid what the AGENCY gets paid.
Complete collapse of services now seems inevitable.
Probably all part of the plan and there is a tory some where associated with the agencies supplying the staff and raking the money in.
Also, I can tell you categorically that locum doctors don’t generally earn much more than locum nurses except possibly at registrar level, which is fair enough.
If they can afford to give a nurse £2,500 for one shift, then they can afford to give them a fair salary that might keep them working for the NHS
I’m sure they,d stop striking if they paid each nurse 2 shifts at that rate a year.
This has been the situation in all areas of the NHS (and basically all professional fields) for a long time.
Work as a “contractor” but never be out of work because the demand is so high. No obligation from you to do a set number of shifts, get paid a premium for the shifts you do.
I’m a doctor and this happens with us as well (more like £400 a shift not thousands). This is because the NHS pay offer is below the market rate, so people go abroad for better conditions rather than stay in the NHS. I could quit my job today and cause a gap in the rota. I guarantee there is nobody to fill it because of a supply shortage of doctors. I could then go back into the same job at £40 an hour as a long term locum.
We need to increase the attractiveness of the work to encourage the doctors we paid to train to actually stay, and to encourage good doctors from other countries to move here. Once the rota gaps are plugged the pay issue would then mostly go away because it wouldn’t be so horrifically understaffed and therefore so unpleasant to work in.
If I call out a plumber it’s a minimum £60 just to have a look, I don’t see why a doctor should be paid less than a plumber.
It’s not new. One of my friends works for the local out of hours service and accidentally saw a sheet of paper with one of the GP’s hourly rates. She was pulling in 2500/shift, did 4/week and was working through a limited company. 480k/year. This was 10 years ago.
I can only assume this is like when most self employed people tell you they make £100k+ a year. It’s true if they worked every day, every month for a whole year…but they don’t.
Odd shifts for specialists in any industry garner silly sums particularly when OHP and VAT are factored in.
I mean they even have a Doctor there saying he’s on £60-70/hour so the person doing all the hard work isn’t getting 3-4 time that.
BBC sensational headline by picking an extreme example when really the headline is NHS spending £3B on agency staff which is deplorable.
Friendly reminder that Medacs, a large agency providing healthcare staff is owned by Lord Ashcroft.
They also got handed a £350 million contract during covid.
I wonder where all those agency fees now might be going?
I will add a second comment, the pay freeze salaried NHS staff are experiencing whilst allowing exorbitant outgoings through alternative streams such as one of the ways this government aims to undermine the NHS.
If the public won’t abandon the NHS, the government will drive the staff out of it into other providers and then implement a privatised plan whilst appearing like saviours of the mess they orchestrated throughout.
If only an FOI request could get politicians and those associated to declare their international assets, but likely this will never be the case.
That’s the hypocrisy in this government rather pay scabs more then the people who kepted this country going
And I’m wondering who owns the agencies and is actually collecting the money. Agency workers get a slightly higher premium in terms of wages but less stability and benefits, this is misleading as the agency takes a hefty cut for themselves. Perhaps better staff wages would stem the flow of NHS workers who have bills to pay and so are becoming agency workers. I’ve both worked as and for a private contractor agency although not in the medical sector.
Let’s just piss money away paying the agency middle-mans markup instead of just sorting out the NHS itself.
I swear, the whole way it has been managed in the last 10+ years seems to be a complete disaster.
They pay the agency £2500 the actual nurse that turns up to do the job still gets paid 50p the agency pockets the rest
It’s really simple.
Double nurses wages. Require a five year contract after training. Stop using agency staff.
> Dr James Barson qualified four years ago. But instead of taking the traditional junior doctor route, he now solely focuses on agency work in hospitals across Lincolnshire.
>
>The reason? Pay and the flexibility. He can earn more than twice what he would get paid if he was on the NHS payroll, without the need to commit to nights and weekends.
They’re just following Conservative advice and finding better jobs and ‘Levelling up’ if they’re not happy with current conditions.
I experienced this in a weird job I somehow found myself in way back in 2016. I decided to apply for this job at a mental health hospital and ended up getting it. Job was horrible, but the money was good. Anyway I started to realise there was always a lot of new faces in the team and I naively thought they had a lot of part time staff. I then asked and realised they were agency staff getting about 100% more money per shift. So I quit and worked for the agency before getting out and going to uni.
It was genuinely crazy how much they were earning. I wasnt even a nurse (obviously), but my base pay was like £23,000 and when I went onto the agency I was earn £300 for a shift. (3 13 hour shifts a week)
Was easier going onto agency as well because I started at a hospital for sectioned teenage girls who were a handful, but when I went with the agency I was between 2 hospitals with older patients who were all darlings. Felt like robbery in all honesty.
Money for agency nurses but not the staff on their payroll. It’s a disgrace.
When I worked agency, my wages just became what they should have been if a decade of wage suppression hadn’t occurred. Then when you factor in 0 employers pension, 0 job security and 0 expenses (thanks IR35 for treating us like employees despite getting none of the benefits) it doesn’t add up to nearly as much as you’d think.
Nick triggle should be put into a cannon and directly fired into the centre of the sun.
Honestly I know a lot of nurses working bank shifts and not one of them has been offered anything close to £500 let alone this. I think this is an attempt to get the public against them.
Agency nurses aren’t on near £2500 a shift (although they’re on higher) so why the lies?
ya well that is for REJECTING MY SISTERS VISA AFTER SHE WORKED IN NHS FOR 5 YEARS, WITH ALWAYS 13-15 BEDS OF DYING PEOPLE ALL TO HERSELF.
how is brexit going?
Agency midwives are being paid £60 an hour at Nottingham University Hospitals because they are so desperate.
Not true. NHS are paying 2,500 to THIRD PARTY RECRUITMENT AGENCIES who pay pennies to the nurses. Read that again. It bairns with nurses, teachers and doctors
No, they’re paying *agencies* that much. The *agencies* are skimming a lot of money off the top of that, then they’re paying the nurses near the standard rate. Don’t fall for the greedy nurses shtick.
I qualified as a nurse in mid 90’s, under a Tory govt. Did agency work in London for a few months. I was paid three times what salaried staff were on. Some wards were staffed entirely by agency nurses because the T&Cs of salaried were so bad, that they left and then came back to same unit on agency, with fewer responsibilities for three times the pay.
It’s a death spiral, feeding itself. Make conditions so bad that people leave. Then need to meet staffing levels with agency. Agency nurses talk to salaried about their hourly rate, Salaried staff leave and join agency.
The agencies all know the pressure management are under to staff the shifts and hike their rates accordingly.
Labour came in 97 and massively invested and n staff – wages, terms etc. Over the next few years, agency nursing fell off the cliff.
Investment in staff is the only way out of this.