HEALTH bosses have been forced into a u-turn after cutting hospital workers’ pay as part of moves to save millions of pounds.

Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust sparked outrage when it reduced the amount of money it was paying to its team of nursing bank staff.

Bank staff provide cover for vacancies, sickness and special leave such as maternity.

However the changes made last year led to many workers refusing to stay on the rota, making it difficult for the trust to cover shifts and forcing it to use more expensive agency staff instead.

It came at a time when the trust was struggling to fill vacancies caused by a national shortage of nurses.

Trust chief nurse Sherree Fagge this week acknowledged a mistake had been made and said rates would be increased in a bid to encourage staff to sign up again. She said: “These changes resulted in a reduction in rates for many working on the bank and they were quite understandably not very popular and received a lot of criticism.

“An important part of nursing and midwifery is recognising when you have got something wrong and doing what you can to put it right, so with this in mind, we have decided to put the bank rates back up again.

“The main reasons we have done this are to reflect your feedback and to try to encourage more of our nursing and midwifery staff to work on the bank.

“Everyone is acutely aware of the pressures we have been under recently and I know these are not helped when we have staffing issues on wards.

“It is hoped that these changes, along with our ongoing recruitment drive to employ new nurses, will go some way to ease this pressure and make your lives on the wards a little easier.”

Gary Palmer from the GMB union said: “Although the GMB welcomes any move by the trust to correct the unfair unilaterally imposed bank rate cuts, it should not have happened in the first place.

“This action by the trust is as a result of staff simply refusing to undertake bank work at the very low rates currently offered by the trust and is seen as a desperate attempt to fill shifts.”

Mr Palmer said some of the new rates were still lower than they were before the cut.