NHS spend on agency midwives up 75 per cent

The amount the NHS is spending on agency midwives increased by over 75 per cent from 2012 to 2014, according to figures from the Royal College of Midwives (RCM).

A series of freedom of information (FOI) requests found that spending on agency midwives increased from £10,159,099 to £17,849,767 over the two years. 130 trusts responded to the requests, with 73 per cent saying they relied on agency midwives to staff their services.

According to the RCM, the average cost of agency midwives is £49.01 per hour, which is more than 2.7 times the amount for a permanently employed midwife. A comparison of figures also showed that agency staff only receive £22.84 per hour, indicating that a large proportion of the spend is going on agency fees and other associated costs.

Jon Skewes, director for policy, employment relations and communication at the RCM, said: “The costs of agency staff are spiralling out of control year after year. The best solution to this problem is to eliminate the shortage of midwives by training and employing more midwives and retaining existing midwives by treating them fairly and valuing them. This can only be achieved by fair pay policies and granting flexible working requests.

“We have found that too often trusts tightly control the spending on bank shifts and overtime for midwives which results in an over reliance on agency midwives. This is clearly more expensive and needs to be corrected sooner rather than later. Mangers should be authorised to pay voluntary overtime to existing staff rather than calling in more expensive agency staff.

“Women deserve high quality and safe care and the way for trusts to provide this is to ensure their units are staffed correctly and funding for maternity services pays directly for the services rather than going to employment agencies.”