One in 30 locum doctors earn £1200 for ten-hour NHS shift, reveal new figures

Stand-in staff are meant to be paid no more than 55 more than permanent rates, but this can be breached if there is a 'significant risk' to patient safety

The NHS paid out £3.7bn to agencies supplying temporary staff in 2015-16 (Getty Images)

One in 30 locum doctors earns £120 an hour, it has been revealed – said to be the highest rates since pay caps were introduced for agency staff working in the NHS.

New data shows average hourly pay for locums between October and December increased by 1.4 per cent to £64.17, while rates for specialists were more than double the agreed wage cap as the health service struggles to cope with staff shortages.

In 86 per cent of cases, staff vacancy was the reason for booking a locum doctor, compared to 1.6 per cent for sickness and 0.5 per cent for maternity and paternity leave, according to Liaison, an organisation that advises the NHS on workforce and finance.

NHS hospitals appeared to breach hourly pay caps for temporary doctors employed by agencies for 80 per cent of shifts they worked – up from 64 per cent in the three months previously.

In December, the head of the health service’s financial regulator NHS Improvement warned it was “wrong from a quality, financial and fairness point of view to pay excessive rates for locums when they are working alongside hard working permanent staff on NHS terms.”

And an investigation showed that hospital in England breached pay caps set in 2015 to address spiralling costs on 241,195 occasions over three months last year.

Liaison said the NHS spent £3.7bn on temporary staff supplied by agencies in 2015-16, and on an average day there are an estimated 3,500 locums working in England and Wales.

Locums are meant to be paid no more than 55 more than permanent rates, but this can be breached by NHS bosses if they decide there is a “significant risk” to patient safety.

Taj Hassan, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, told The Times A&E departments were being forced to “paper over the cracks, which are very big in some systems”.

NHS Improvement said last month that one hospital regularly paid a locum doctor £360 an hour, or £3,600 for a ten-hour shift.

But the NHS claims to have cut more than £600m through its crackdown on fees paid to staffing agencies.

Staff shortages among paediatricians have caused a third of children's wards to shut temporarily, "jeopardising" the health of vulnerable young patients, according to the Royal Colelge of Paediatrics and Child Health.

Neena Modi, the college's president, said severe rota shortfalls meant "the quality of care people want to deliver is being compromised.