Northern Trust responds as agency nursing costs in Northern Ireland rise to £162m
The interim chief executive of the Northern Health and Social Care Trust has acknowledged the publication of the Northern Ireland Audit Office report on the costly use of temporary nursing staff in Northern Ireland.
Speaking at a meeting of the Trust board at Causeway Hospital in Coleraine, Suzanne Pullins said it “sends out a very important message about reliance on temporary staff, particularly agency workers”, stating that the Trust has been moving away from this “high cost”.
"We are committed to improving and sustaining our workforce. There is Trust oversight of this issue,” she said.
A nursing / midwifery and healthcare support framework was established in 2023 which was described by the Department of Health as “a vital step in delivering a reduction in agency staff costs incurred by the health service in Northern Ireland”.
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The Department reported in December of last year that spending on off-contract nurses, midwives and healthcare support workers within the health and social care system in Northern Ireland has reduced by £120m since May 2023.
The annual expenditure on agency nursing staff in Northern Ireland has tripled in six years, reaching £162m in 2024-25, with some hourly rates paid to nurses exceeding those paid in London, a report which was recently published by Northern Ireland’s Comptroller and Auditor General, Dorinnia Carville, on the use of temporary nursing staff in Northern Ireland said.
The report stated that annual permanent nursing and midwifery staff costs in Northern Ireland reached a total of £1.1bn in 2024-25.
Meanwhile, the registered nursing workforce has increased since the 2020 NIAO review, from around 14,000 whole-time equivalent nurses in March 2019 to approximately 17,000 in March 2025. Reported nurse vacancies have decreased by 45 per cent over the same period.
The report said an agency nursing framework, introduced in 2023, has “helped to largely eliminate” the use of very expensive off-contract nursing agencies, a practice, it stated, was “previously prevalent across Trusts”.
The report noted that, on average, agency nursing staff cost £11 per hour more than staff who were employed through Trusts’ internal bank systems, staff which are employed directly by Trusts.