Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 9 December 2014 to Question 216783, if he will make a comparative assessment of the cost effectiveness of (a) attracting qualified nurses who are no longer nursing back into nursing and (b) training nurses from scratch.

The Personal Social Services Research Unit at the University of Kent estimates that the average cost of training a nurse in 2013 was £78,604. This figure reflects the total cost of training and therefore includes costs funded through the public purse and by the student.

The cost of retraining a nurse varies because each programme is adapted to the individual needs of the nurse. However, Health Education England (HEE) estimates that the average cost to them to support each nurse back into practice is £2,000. This does not include any costs to the student. In addition, HEE has spent £50,000 on a recent social media campaign to attract nurses back to practice. This campaign has resulted in 779 nurses registering to undertake a return to practice programme in the next three months.