Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what proportion of the staff budgets of NHS trusts and foundation trusts consisted of expenditure on contract and agency staff in each of the last five financial years.

Following the Francis report[1] many trusts increased their spend on temporary staffing to meet safe staffing levels.

The Department expects trusts to have a strong grip on their finances, and manage their contract and agency[2] staffing spend responsibly through effective and efficient workforce planning and management.

The proportion of National Health Service foundation trusts staff budgets that consisted of expenditure on contract and agency staff in each of the last five financial years is set out in the following table:

The proportion of NHS trusts staff budgets that consisted of expenditure on contract and agency staff in 2013-14 is 6.3%. Previous years are not available as agency and contract staff were not identified separately from other non permanent staff[3].

[1] http://www.midstaffspublicinquiry.com/

[2]The definition of Contract / Agency staff is: “Agency” employee payments for the employment of staff where the staff remain employees of the agency and “Contract staff” where the NHS trust has control over numbers and qualifications of staff (in contrast to a service obtained under contract) .

[3] non-permanent staff are defined as “others engaged on the objectives of the organisation including staff on inward secondment or loan from other organisations, bank/agency/temporary staff and contract staff.