A QUARTER of the Filipino nurses recruited – and much needed – by Wye Valley NHS Trust have failed essential English language tests.

The 25 per cent failure rate was confirmed to a meeting of the Wye Valley NHS Trust board.

As a result, the board heard, the recruitment of Filipino nurses was going to take longer than planned – sustaining the trust’s current  reliance on costly agency services.

The trust has been actively recruiting in the Philippines to fill nursing vacancies and was expecting 85 Filipino nurses by April next year.

As planned, the nurses would arrive in groups of 10-20 with the first group set to arrive in a month’s time.

Already, the trust has established an overseas project team to meet monthly to co-ordinate and support the arrival of these nurses.

But the trust concedes that it is “difficult to be exact” with the numbers actually coming as successful recruitment depended on various  processes including the international English language test.

Maureen Bignall, the trust’s director of people and development, told the board of a running 25 per cent fail rate in the test amongst those Filipino nurses chosen by the trust.

The trust is struggling to recruit to positions available at all levels, with its special measures status frequently cited in feedback as putting applicants off.

Currently, the trust has 257 full time equivalent posts going through its recruitment processes – just over 10 per cent of the workforce.

There is particular pressure on consultant posts with a high use of expensive agency locums to cover on-going vacancies.

Actions to mitigate related risk include reviews of fixed term - non-training - posts with a view to them becoming substantive, and exploring the use of doctors recruited through the International Medical Trainees (IMT) programme.

In nursing, the recruiting challenge is especially acute in the surgical and medical wards and the Stroke unit.

Medical staffing is acknowledged by the trust as a “most concerning issue” in relation to the overall spend on pay.

Concern is largely driven by the fact that, at both consultant and middle grade levels, the trust is operating well below its substantive establishment – causing cost pressures as gaps are covered.

The issue is acknowledged as spread across a wide range of specialities.

There is now the very real prospect of the trust becoming an even less attractive to recruits  as a result of the public sector pay restraint decision by the government.

Public sector pay rises will be limited to one per cent per annum for  the next four years - possibly inclusive of increments.

This decision was at odds with the forecast and recommendations of the Five Year Forward View (FYFV) for the NHS, and is taken as indicating a lack of confidence at the Treasury that the £22 billion efficiencies set out in the FYFV are achievable.

The implication for the trust, the board heard, may include less latitude for renegotiation of terms and conditions to secure workforce changes associated with the Working Together for Herefordshire Programme, and its intention to have the county’s health and social care teams aligning resources.