HALTON and Warrington Hospitals breach caps on the use of agency staff more than 100 times a week, according to new figures.

Research by the Nursing Times shows that Warrington and Halton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is the second highest user of agency doctors and nurses in the north west.

Figures obtained by a freedom of information request revealed the trust overrides caps on agency staff 139 times a week.

The caps were introduced in November, with trusts now prevented from paying agency doctors and nurses more than 55 higher than permanent staff.

Estephanie Dunn, regional director for the Royal College of Nursing in the north west, said: “The NHS has relied on short-term agency staff to plug gaps for many years and the problem won’t be fixed overnight.

“Another significant problem is the fact that the number of nurses being trained in the UK has been reduced.

“We need to pay nurses and health care assistants fairly so that we are able to retain staff.

“It takes three years for students to complete their nurse training so until then trusts will continue to struggle with the agency cap and rely on overseas recruitment.”

Karen Dawber, director of nursing at Warrington and Halton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We are working with the agencies to agree capped rates and have already reduced our agency cap breaches over the last three months by half.”

“Our priority is to ensure that our wards are safely staffed and we have robust rotas in place to ensure the correct skill mix and number of nurses.

“The areas where we are most likely to breach capped rates are in the highly specialist areas, such as intensive care, emergency department and theatres, where there is a national shortage of specialist staff.”

“As patient safety is paramount we always try to ensure that staffing levels and skill mix are adequate for the specific area, and sometimes this requires us paying for an agency nurse above the capped rate, which in turn causes an agency cap breach."