Shropshire hospital paid nurse £2,200 for a single shift

The shock figure, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, was paid by the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust to cover for a shortage of permanent nurses.

It was also revealed that in December last year there were 47 agency nurses working at the trust, which runs the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and the Princess Royal Hospital at Telford.

Sarah Bloomfield, director of nursing at the trust, said there was a nationally recognised shortfall in the number of trained nurses, which meant that at times agency and temporary staff had to be used.

She said: "We have said consistently that we want to recruit more nurses to reduce our reliance on agency and temporary staff and this has been widely publicised with a number of recruitment events taking place recently to attract new staff. We have recruited, or made offers to, more than 150 staff nurses and health care assistants in recent months as part of our efforts to recruit more nursing staff to support our wards and departments.

"These new recruits have included a number who have been offered positions through a successful nursing recruitment event at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital just last week, which we will repeat again on Thursday."

She said the trust would continue its efforts to ensure that fewer agency nurses would be used on its wards over the coming months as the new starters settled in.

"It will mean better continuity of care and more support for ward teams," she added.

New figures obtained by the Nursing and Midwifery Council revealed that a chronic shortage of British nurses meant nearly a third of recruits had to be sought abroad last year.

Nationally, NHS spending on temporary staff rocketed to £2.5 billion a year.

The number of foreign nurses and midwives registered in the past 12 months grew to 8,200 from 6,200 a year earlier as the number trained here slumped by more than 8,000.

The Nursing and Midwifery Council found that 29 per cent of new nurses were recruited from abroad in the past 12 months, compared to 11 per cent five years previously.

About 7,500 came from the EU, particularly Spain, Italy and Portugal. Others came from further afield, including the Philippines.

Hospitals are under pressure to hire more nurses to cope with a growing and ageing population, but there have been concerns that language difficulties could have an impact on patient safety.

Edmund Stubbs, of think tank Civitas, said: "It is evident that a lack of staff is leading to excessive spending on agency staff, locums and overseas recruitment."