Government accused of giving misleading information about NHS temp staffing

The government has outlined parts of its 10 year health plan; however, it has been met with mixed reactions.

While reforms have been very much welcomed, there have been criticisms.

The Association of Professional Staffing Companies (APSCo) believes that the 10 year plan does not go far enough to meet the much-needed skills access demands across the NHS.

The Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) has said that the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) plan risks misleading the public about NHS staffing.

REC Chief Executive Neil Carberry OBE, said, “Sustainable approaches to staffing the NHS need in-depth expertise and an understanding of the complex needs of the service, not the politics of the stump. Despite this – and its willingness to use private providers operating outside the NHS to address shortages – the government continues to issue misleading information to people about temporary staffing in the NHS.

“Banks are generally more expensive than on-framework agencies, and we know that good agencies offer better compliance, safety, and cost control than less regulated alternatives.

“Trust leaders know agency needs to be a well-controlled part of the mix – it is time for the government to start dealing in realities. It is misleading for the DHSC to claim that staffing Banks are cheaper than employing agency workers and that the NHS can eliminate deploying agency staff and still reduce backlogs with safe staffing levels.

“The truth is that high staff turnover has become endemic across the health workforce; this is the result of a broken staffing model that fails to recruit and retain permanent staff, pushing Trusts away from politically disfavoured on-framework agencies and into the arms of pricier off-framework options and staffing Banks.”

Neil added, “Planning to ban the use of agency staff by the end of the Parliament is short-sighted and will end up pushing costs up, not down as wards close due to short staffing and more care leaves the NHS to entirely private settings.

“Instead of this, we need a sensible partnership that gets the balance right between permanent staff being the backbone of the service and agency and bank staff being there to fill gaps when needed at reasonable rates. If private-public partnerships can be achieved elsewhere in the NHS then staffing which is integral to the success of this plan should not be excluded from a similar arrangement.

“Quashing the ability of people to work flexibly through agencies will also exacerbate the recruitment crisis in healthcare, with our data showing nearly 42,000 job postings for nurses and medical practitioners right now and qualified medics working outside the sector as they cannot be placed with the flexibility they need. Plans on paper, aren’t enough. The Secretary of State shouldn’t avoid sensible engagement with staffing partners – more could be achieved in partnership.”

Neil added, “We urge the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and the Treasury to convene a one-day summit to take urgent stock of the current approach to staffing, set clear priorities, and commit to a transparent reporting and monitoring of demand and costs of using agency workers. This is the moment to bring structured public-private partnerships to the table, harnessing the innovation and scale of consultancies and tech providers to transform workforce procurement and planning.”

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