NHS spending on temporary staff highlights need for investment into staff wellbeing services
The huge sums spent on plugging NHS staffing gaps underline the need to support existing staff to remain within the workforce and available to treat patients.
30 January 2024
New analysis by Laing Buisson has found the annual bill for hiring temporary NHS staff has passed £10 billion.
This includes £4.6 billion to hire additional agency staff, and a further £5.8 billion for doctors and nurses to cover additional shifts when gaps appear in rotas, including due to industrial action and staff sickness.
The huge sums spent on plugging NHS staffing gaps with temporary workers lay bare the workforce issues facing the health service, and underline the need to ensure that existing staff are offered the support they require to remain within the workforce and available to treat patients.
The latest NHS staff sickness absence data shows more than 2.6 million working days were lost for mental health reasons in just five months (April 2023 – August 2023), highlighting the scale of the impact of poor mental health on the workforce.
The BPS recently published a report on the future of NHS staff mental health and wellbeing services, which are fundamental to NHS staff retention, and cost-effective set against the vast sums being spent propping up the workforce.
We are urging the government to commit to further funding for staff mental health and wellbeing services to complement local long-term investment and support the delivery of the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan.
Dr Roman Raczka, BPS President-Elect, said:
“The society has been campaigning vigorously on the need to protect the future of NHS staff mental health and wellbeing services, and these new figures highlight just why these services are so important.
“The positive impact on individual staff members of the dedicated support is vital, but the overall impact on the health service of large numbers of staff being unavailable for work or leaving the NHS entirely for mental health reasons is also significant.
“When you see the sums spent on filling these holes with temporary staff reaching eye-watering figures like £10 billion, you have to question why the relatively small amount of £38.5 million wasn’t provided to fund the NHS Staff Mental Health and Wellbeing Hubs.
“NHS staff, including those employed on a temporary basis, continue to work incredibly hard to provide the best possible service to patients, but it is obvious that more permanent solutions are needed both on workforce retention and staff wellbeing to deal with the enormous challenges that the health service faces.”