Agency Nursing Staff
The national framework agreement for the supply of agency nurses commenced on 1 October 2009 for a period of three years and expires on 30 September 2012. There is the potential to extend this period by up to maximum further 12 months.
The framework agreement is available for use by the NHS and other public bodies throughout England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. It uses a set of national terms and conditions of contract and suppliers individually appointed geographical regions that have been based on current Strategic Health Authority (SHA) boundaries within England and/or Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
Each region has its own list of appointed suppliers, with each supplier having individual agreed contract pricing. Further details about the list of appointed suppliers for each region is available from here.
Each regional award provides for an extensive range of agency nurses supplied under three specialty sectors:
- Critical
- General (including Mental Health)
- Midwifery
with each specialty supplying the following bands of Agency Worker:
- Critical - bands 4, 5, 6 and 7
- General - bands 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7
- Midwifery - bands 4, 6 and 7
These bands and specialties are supplied against a generic set of job profiles, which were developed by relevant stakeholders and reflect NHS Employers Agenda for Change national profiles. A summary of these job profiles are available to download here. Detailed job profiles are available via the Framework Documents page.
The framework agreement has a transparent agreed contract pricing and allows for NHS trusts and other public bodies to realise efficiency savings through negotiating service level agreements and benefiting from additional discounts for volume of business agreed with the appointed framework agencies. Further details about agreed contract pricing information can be found on the Contract Pricing page in the left hand menu.
