Agencies fear overtime ban will hit NHS staffing
More than three quarters of recruiters expect the NHS’s current staffing crisis to intensify due to new measures restricting trusts from recruiting agency nurses and locum doctors also employed as substantive staff in the health service.
From next weekend (1 April), NHS trusts will no longer be able to turn to agency workers also employed in the NHS as substantive staff to fill gaps in rotas due to a move from government aimed at encouraging nurses and doctors to take on overtime shifts via internal NHS banks rather than through recruitment agencies.
However, a recent survey of 199 healthcare recruiters carried out by the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) has found that for 48% of agencies, more than half of the temporary nurses, doctors and allied health professionals on their books are also employed substantively in the NHS.
The survey also found 77% of healthcare recruiters expect candidates on their books to favour finding work in the private sector rather than the NHS in response to the ban, while 56% expect some nurses and doctors to stop working additional shifts in the NHS altogether. Only 18% of recruiters surveyed think some candidates will transfer to hospital banks for additional work.
Last month, the REC carried out research in partnership with the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) that found substantive NHS staff were put off from signing up to internal banks due to unreliable communication, old-fashioned payment procedures, poor management and lack of professionalism in comparison to specialist recruitment agencies.
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