FAIRFIELD General Hospital spent £1.78 million covering nursing shifts last year.

The NHS trust is one of many forced to spend millions across the country to cover nursing vacancies.

As at the end of March Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust had 82 qualified nurse vacancies but a surplus of 18 unqualified nurses.

Across England at the same time there were 35,794 vacant nursing posts (around 10 per cent) of which 95 per cent were filled with temporary workers and in the north of England there are around 8,000 nursing vacancies.

Fairfield General Hospital has recently had a change in leadership with the Northern Care Alliance taking over. In 12 months the hospital's CQC performance went from inadequate, the worst rating, to requires improvement.

The hospital also managed to reduce its vacancies by seven per cent in the same period.

Nationally £976 million more than planned was spent on bank staff filling in vacant roles in the NHS, 48.8 per cent more than was planned.

Fairfield's spending was split between qualified nurse cover, £1.3 million, and unqualified nurse cover £480,000.

Tyrone Roberts, director of nursing at the Bury and Rochdale Care Organisation, which manages Fairfield General Hospital, said: “Over the last year we have managed to reduce the nurse vacancy rate at Fairfield General Hospital in Bury by seven percent and we now have more nurses per ward than last year.

"This is a great success for the Bury & Rochdale Care Organisation and testament to the hard work we have put into recruiting new nurses, retaining our existing staff and ensuring all our wards are safely staffed.

"We have recruited eight new qualified nurses recently who will be starting work at Fairfield General Hospital this month. We have also recruited another 18 nurses who will start work later in the year, and 14 nursing associates are due to start in January.

"We have a great team spirit at Fairfield General Hospital and more and more nurses are starting to realise what a great place it is to work.

"194 nurses and midwives attended our first Northern Care Alliance nursing and midwifery recruitment careers fair held on 9 May and a total of 125 job offers were made at our Care Organisations in Salford, Oldham, Bury, Rochdale and North Manchester.

"The amount of money we spend on agency nurses and the amount of agency nurses we use has also fallen across the Northern Care Alliance this month."