News / Trusts confident of £900m agency cut

NHS trusts believe they are on course to reduce spending on agency staff by £900m this year, according to quarter two figures from NHS Improvement.

The oversight body said 71% of trusts had reduced their agency spending since new rules and caps were introduced last November. And year-to-date spending of £1.5bn was £312m less than the same period a year before. However, year-to-date spending on agency staff still exceeded plan by almost 16%. 

Although providers were predicting a full-year reduction of £900m on the 2015/16 spend of £3.6bn, this was £205m above the agency expenditure ceilings. NHS Improvement said 6% of the total NHS pay bill was spent on agency workers at Q2, compared with a planned 5.2%. 

The planned year-end total spending on agency staff is just under £2.4bn (4.8% of total pay costs), but at Q2 trusts predicted it would hit almost £2.7bn (5.3%).

NHS Improvement said some trusts had to do more to bring their spending in line with individual ceilings. It wrote to trusts in October setting out the next steps in curbing agency spend, including specific actions for those missing their ceiling.

As part of the measures it named the trusts with the best and worst performance against their agency ceiling and agency spend as a percentage of total pay.

Anita Charlesworth, Health Foundation director of research and economics, said: ‘Despite the agency cap, spending on temporary staff is 16% higher than planned, suggesting that the lack of a workforce strategy is still hitting trust finances.’