Nursing bank and agency

Data source

Nursing and midwifery agency hours and expenditure are collected from NHS Boards by a survey. Data on the the hours worked and expenditure on nursing and midwifery bank staff is extracted from SWISS.

Nursing bank and agency expenditure was first collected for the year ending 31 March 2009.

Method

Pay data for the NHS Scotland workforce are extracted monthly from SWISS and loaded into the Data Warehouse. The nursing and midwifery bank hours and expenditure filter this data for staff who are on a Bank contract and have a job family of Nursing and midwifery on 31 March. Total cost includes salary and employer pension and National Insurance (NI) contributions.

The average whole time equivalent is:

TotalHoursWorked / (52 * WeeklyConditionedHours)

For years prior to 2024/25 the weekly conditioned hours were 37.5, 2024/25 and 2025/26 this is 37 and for 2026 onwards this will be 36.5.

The nursing and midwifery agency hours and expenditure are completed, signed off and returned to NES by each NHS Board. These data are the quality assured and loaded into the Data Warehouse.

What data are published?

The nursing bank and agency staff hours worked and expenditure are reported by NHS Board each year in June.

The following data are published:

• total hours worked
• total cost (£)
• Average whole time equivalent

Data quality

Completed agency surveys are signed off by the Director of Nursing, or equivalent officer within the NHS Board.

Bank data in SWISS is sourced from payroll systems and is of high quality.

In a small number of cases staff, who were a bank contract during the year, and moved to a non bank contract within the same NHS Board, will not be included in the bank data. Those who were on a part time contract and moved to a bank contract in the same NHS Board during the year will have all hours and expenditure included. This is due to the way Contract Type is recorded within SWISS.

Quality assurance

A number of steps are in place to ensure that these data are reported accurately.

1. Each excel survey is provided to NHS Boards in the middle of March to complete for the previous financial year. The survey is signed off by the Director of Nursing within each Board.
   
   
2. This survey is completed using data from the Finance system.
   
   
3. Once these data have been returned to NES, each survey is checked for any completion errors or missing information, and compared with previous figures for consistency. When required, NES clarify any potential issues with data providers.
   
   
4. These data are then processed to combine all extracts together and updated in reporting software, PowerBI. The report is then checked to ensure the values are shown accurately and any additional data intelligence are noted.
   
   

The above quality assurance processes results in accurate information being released as part of the NHSScotland Workforce official statistics publication. Therefore it is unlikely that any significant issues with the data quality would arise after publication. In the event that we are made of any major data inaccuracies we will update any outputs under a revision. 

Limitations

The data provided are at a high level and it is not possible to identify spend by other variables, for example AfC Band.