According to a report by getbucks, Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust paid one of its agency workers £1,600 for a single 12 hour shift earlier this year. This works out as a rate of £133.58 per hour.

While this figure seems high, a request made under the Freedom of Information Act revealed that hourly rates for agency staff can go even higher; up to as much as £540. This amount was paid by the North Bristol NHS Trust in 2011 to a staffing agency for a temporary worker to cover a 10.25 hour shift - meaning the total bill for one day's work from one person was £5,554.

Earlier in the week, it was revealed that Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (‘NSFT’) had spent an average of £1.3 million per month during the 2013/14 financial year on temporary workers. The mental health trust, which cut almost £15 million from its budget last year as part of a redesign of services, saw 175 staff leave through voluntary and compulsory redundancies.

NSFT officials said the organisation had used locums and agency staff during its radical redesign of services to reduce the numbers of redundancies and it had been necessary to use temporary workers to maintain safe staffing levels in some areas where it was harder to recruit.

However, Emma Corlett, NSFT Unison media spokesperson, who is also a mental health nurse, said: “This unbudgeted expenditure is unsustainable and presents a further serious risk to our mental health services. The use of temporary staffing to plug gaps is poor for continuity and consistency of care, which established evidence suggests leads to worse outcomes for people who use mental health services.”