A MENTAL health trust is offering London level salaries in a bid to encourage more nurses to come and work in Sussex.

Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust has been struggling to keep hold of its staff while also dealing with a national shortage of workers.

The trust provides mental health, substance abuse and learning disability services across Sussex and in parts of Hampshire and Kent.

The trust has about 1,150 nurses in band five and six posts and the overall vacancy rate is 33 per cent and 16 per cent for both levels respectively.

It has been difficult for the trust to attract and keep nurses because the county is an expensive area to live and organisations in the capital are able to offer extra payments such as London weighting.

Given the choice of hospitals in northern parts of the county, such as Langley Green in Crawley, or a London based service, staff have opted for the extra money to work in the capital instead.

Sussex Partnership has been running an extensive recruitment campaign and is stepping it up later this year to target former nurses who have retired or who have left the profession due to career breaks.

It started offering the supplements to new recruits, adding an extra five to ten per cent to nursing salaries, last year.

It has already attracted almost 30 new nurses so far as a result.

The trust has also begun offering "golden hello" payments in some areas, such as in dementia and learning disability services, which gives nurses a bonus of £2,000 over the first two years of their employment.

A trust spokeswoman said: “We cover a large geographic area and a lot of our services are very close to London so, for many nurses who are looking for their first job after qualifying or looking for a new job, the weighting allowance offered by London trusts is very attractive.

“We’ve seen some real success as a result of introducing these additional offers but we always need more staff to come and join us.

“Earlier this year many of our own nurses and staff became the faces of a new national recruitment campaign where they are featured speaking about their experiences of working for Sussex Partnership.”