NORTH Cumbria Integrated Care spent almost £23million on agency nursing staff over a three-year period, according to figures obtained by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN).

From 2020-2022, NCIC spent £22.8million on registered nurses as the health service dealt with the pressures of the pandemic.

The RCN says that “poor government planning” and “underfunding of the NHS” has forced trusts in across the country to spend millions that could have paid the salaries of almost 31,000 full-time nurses.

The analysis by the Royal College of Nursing found hospitals nationally spent a total of £3.2billion between 2020 - 2022 to cover gaps in rotas and keep wards open.

The RCN have described the figures as a ‘wake-up call’ and have called on the government to give nursing staff and patients the ‘investment and respect they deserve.’

A recent report from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) found that NCIC did not always have enough staff to care for people using services and keep them safe and that not all staff had training in key skills or managed safety well.

But the report also said that staff treated people with compassion and kindness, respected their privacy and dignity, and took account of their individual needs.

NCIC have said that they ‘continually monitor’ their use of agency workers and that ‘ongoing pressures’ mean they need additional nurses - but that spend on agency nurses has dropped hugely since 2021.

A spokesperson for NCIC said: “We have been extremely successful in recruiting nursing staff and our spend on agency staff is now more than half what it was in 2021.

“All agency staff employed by us are government framework approved and costs and background checks on these workers are managed effectively.

"We now have one of the lowest vacancy rates for nursing in the country at just over 3 per cent compared to the national average of around 9 per cent which we are very proud of after huge efforts have been made.

“This means we are almost fully staffed for our normal bed numbers.

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“However, due to ongoing pressures we have a high number of escalation beds open which means we need additional nurses to care for patients in these beds.

“In addition to our nursing recruitment successes, we have invested in additional healthcare assistants who support our nurses, and we are now fully staffed.

“We continually monitor the use of agency workers and any agency staff employed will receive an induction to the ward they are working on to make sure high quality, safe care is maintained.”