£1m increase in nurses needed at the Royal Preston and Chorley Hospital to reach new 'safe level'

The details emerged at a recent board meeting of Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (LTH), which runs the two facilities.

Chief nursing officer Sarah Cullen made her professional recommendation for the number of nursing staff that will be needed across all in-patient ward areas - so excluding A&E.

The trust currently has zero vacancies for registered nurses, but the increase deemed to be necessary will come with a bill of £1.08m.

Board members heard that discussions were going to be held with the Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board (ICB) over funding - and LTH chief executive warned that they were likely to be “difficult” conversations.

Some of the increase has been driven by a move towards six or even seven-day operation of the trust’s theatres and the resultant demand for cover in surgical areas, which was historically lower at the weekend.

“At the moment, we are running as much evening and weekend work as possible and we do fill [the] surgical wards at Chorley regularly now,” chief operating officer Faith Button said.

Sarah Cullen added that the nursing number needed had been arrived at “in line with national quality...requirements”.

“We undertake robust safety staffing assessments in partnership with every ward manager, matron, divisional nurse director, HR and finance…based on the acuity and occupancy of the ward environment,” she explained.

The meeting was told that a change from short to long shifts which was made pre-pandemic had achieved a £2.1m saving for the trust. The organisation has also managed to end the use of agency healthcare assistant staff, generating a £340,000 saving every month.

There are currently 180 whole-time-equivalent healthcare assistant vacancies, which will take an estimated 18 months to fill.

Non-executive director Tricia Whiteside warned that as well as asking the ICB for financial support, “we have to ask ourselves what actions have we taken to identify the incremental funding we need [for] nursing against some of the funding that we have in other areas”.