Spending on agency nurses in Herefordshire has more than tripled in two years.

An investigation by trade union the Royal College of Nursing found the trusts which run all England’s NHS hospitals spent a total of £3.2 billion on agency nurses between 2020 and 2022 inclusive, with marked rises in each year.

But the rises at Wye Valley NHS Trust, which runs Hereford County Hospital along with community health services in the surrounding area, were even higher.

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It went from spending £4.2 million on agency RNs (registered nurses) in 2020, to £11.9 million last year (see graph).

But more striking has been the rise in its spending on non-RN nursing staff – that is, health care support workers, healthcare assistants and nursing assistants, where the trust’s agency bill leapt fourteenfold from £76,000 in 2021 to £1.07 million in 2022.

All nine English regions showed year-on-year increases on agency spending over the period, with a total rise nationally between 2020 and 2022 of 62.5 per cent, to £1.33 billion last year.

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The union said the billions “squandered on agencies” could have been used to hire over 31,000 nurses.

It blamed poor government planning and underfunding of the NHS, which it said had left health trusts with little choice given the 40,000 current unfilled staff nursing vacancies nationally.

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RCN chief nurse Professor Nicola Ranger said the figures “ should act as a wake-up call”, adding: “Not acting now will mean even more patients on waiting lists and the crisis in the nursing workforce deepening further.”

The figures are based on freedom of information requests to 202 NHS trusts in England, of which 182 responded.

Wye Valley NHS Trust did not reply when asked why the figures for Herefordshire were particularly high.