Nurses are fed up with payroll delays at the health service’s in-house recruitment agency, NHS Professionals. A survey by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) revealed more than 40% of nurses claimed NHS Professionals did not pay their wages on time.

Nearly a fifth said they felt the body did not pay well enough and 13% mentioned the agency suffered from staff shortages.

While NHS Professionals has a good reputation in the profession for its work providing training and induction, those with first-hand experience are less impressed.

Chris Day, director of business development at NHS Professionals, said: “The findings are misleading because the sample is too small. At the beginning, there were teething problems within the organisation in terms of payment.

“However, these are now sorted out and have been since 2000. However, we certainly take on board the RCN’s findings which do need to be addressed.”

Nurses felt agencies paid better than NHS Professionals, although their quality as employers varied.

Agency nurses were more likely to be younger, international or from ethnic minority backgrounds.

But the RCN survey also found that black nurses were almost twice as likely as their white colleagues to be underpaid. It added that black nurses were also far less likely to win promotion.