The Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust is to cut agency spend and move agency staff to its internal staff agency, the trust has confirmed in a statement.

Under the ‘extended hire period clause’, the trust has called for all locum doctors and nurses to be removed from agency books and placed under the hospital’s control.

A statement released to Recruiter says: “As part of the national QIPP (Quality, Innovation, Productivity, Prevention) strategy, the trust is introducing several initiatives to improve workforce efficiency and reduce agency spend. One initiative involves the trust moving agency staff after a period of time to its ‘bank’ – its internal staff agency. This will achieve important savings which can be used for patient care.

“This approach has involved London Procurement Programme (LPP), which works with trusts to make the most of the purchasing power of the NHS in London to maximise investment in patient care. The notice given to agencies to encourage agency workers to join the trust’s bank, and hence provide an interim workforce at a lower cost to the trust, is compliant with LPP framework guidance.

“Where there may be a shortage of specialist staff, such as in theatres and ITU (intensive treatment unit), the trust will continue to use agency workers.

“All of the trust’s agency costs are tightly regulated under our service level agreement and by the fact we have agreements only with agencies approved by the NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency (Buying Solutions).”

Tom Hadley, the REC’s director of policy and professional services, expressed “extreme” concern over the changes and says the REC would be writing to the hospital to urge it to seriously consider reversing the decision.

“All the evidence suggests that moving the recruitment process away from expert providers simply costs the NHS more money. The recent decision to scrap NHS Professionals — essentially an in-house recruitment agency for the whole of the NHS — provides a stark warning of this; we are surprised that the Royal Free Hospital seems unwilling to heed the expensive lessons learnt by the Department of Health. 

“Not only will this process not prove cost effective, but it risks burdening hospitals with recruitment processes for which they do not have the required resources or expertise. Recruitment agencies are highly trained professionals who specialise in sourcing, vetting and placing candidates according to the shifting demands of patient care. It is simply unacceptable to announce these changes without prior consultation.”