AN ‘OXFORD weighting’ for NHS staff pay is being considered by the county’s acute trust to help deal with its recruitment and retention crisis.

Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust’s management executive has tabled the idea of local pay increases worth up to £7m.

At present the trust has more than 700 vacancies and an average turnover of 14.9 per cent every 12 months - rising to more than 22 per cent in the JR’s A&E.

OUH vice-chairman Geoffrey Salt remarked on ‘eye-wateringly high’ vacancy rates across the NHS.

He said: “It would be really good to find out if this is inevitable, that we can’t recruit because the staff don’t exist, or what we can do.”

The proposed ‘weighting’ would see an extra three per cent increase for staff employed on pay bands 1 to 5, a two per cent allowance for staff on bands 6 to 7, and a one per cent allowance for staff above band 7.

The Department of Health normally offers ‘high cost area supplements (HCAS), similar to ‘London weighting’, paid to all NHS staff working in inner and outer London and ‘fringe’ zones.

Oxford is classed as a ‘fringe’ zone, so workers receive an extra £961 to £1,665 to offset living costs, but unions have said in the past this is not enough.

At the meeting, non-executive director Sir John Bell remarked that the issue was ‘going south very quickly’.

He added: “It’s system-wide. I’m not sure any of our initiatives are going to fix this problem.2

Interim chief nurse Andrew MacCallum added: “I’ve worked in this hospital for just under a month and it’s a great place to work. I want to encourage as many nursing colleagues to come and work here [as possible].

“It’s difficult, but our biggest asset is our people, our culture and our name as a hospital. We should be looking positively at attracting staff to come and work for us.”