Health agency staff cost States £4m. more each year
Agency staff working in the health service are costing the States about £4m. a year more than if permanent staff were doing those jobs.
Health & Social Care president Al Brouard told the States Assembly yesterday that a review carried out earlier this year had found that the direct pay of agency staff was 30% higher than for permanent staff.
The annual figure was calculated by taking the costs from between January and May this year and extrapolating them across a 12-month period.
Since only direct pay was taken into account, the actual costs to the States of agency staff could be higher still. As of last week, there were 134 agency staff working at HSC.
‘Having a full complement of permanent staff at HSC is highly desirable, but highly unlikely,’ said Deputy Brouard.
‘There has always been a need to recruit agency and casual workers or bank workers as this provides a flexible way to manage workforce numbers and also to address short-term skill gaps, such as for sickness and other absences.’
His predecessor, Heidi Soulsby, who is now leading a Policy & Resources project to increase support to HSC, accepted that agency staff were necessary in the health service.
‘If we didn’t have them, we couldn’t manage services,’ said Deputy Soulsby.
But she thought HSC’s estimate of the extra costs were on the low side, with no account of accommodation subsidies.
‘The cost is actually higher because we don’t receive any of the taxes or social insurance contributions on that front, so it doesn’t actually help our tax coffers,’ she said.
Deputy Brouard again highlighted his committee’s frustration at a lack of accommodation for staff, which it has consistently said makes recruitment much harder. He said that suitable candidates were often identified but then lost because no appropriate housing was available for them.
Deputy Brouard was answering questions from Deputy Lester Queripel, who warned that the accommodation crisis could take a decade to deal with.
The HSC president again claimed that HSC could have built accommodation on the Bordage Seath field at the Princess Elizabeth Hospital if other deputies had been more supportive of the plan earlier in this States term.
Deputy Sam Haskins was concerned rent allowances provided to key workers further inflated the island’s already high rental costs.
