More than £3 million has been spent on agency nurses since Dudley’s Russells Hall Hospital set up a staff bank to reduce costs.

Bosses at the hospital said using their own pool of workers had shaved £2m off the bill for temporary staff.

But due to increased numbers of emergency admissions during last year’s cold snap they had been forced to fall back on paying agency nurses.

The hospital trust said today it had spent around £3.1m between April, when the staff bank was set up, and January this year.

It had previously spent £5m on agency nurses between April 2009 and March 2010.

The staff bank is made up of 400 nurses and clinical workers, already employed by the trust, and bosses say using their own staff is better as they already know the hospital.

Chief executive Paula Clark said: “Ensuring our patients receive the best possible care from highly-skilled staff is a top priority for The Dudley Group of Hospitals and this means that sometimes we need to utilise bank and agency staff to cover annual leave, maternity leave and sickness as well as filling short-term vacancies.

“As our own staff bank has become much more established we have reduced our reliance on external bank and agency staff by some £2m this year down to £3m.

“However, there are times when we still require support from nursing agencies,”she added.

“From April 2010 to January 2011, we spent approximately £3.1m on agency nursing staff to ensure the most appropriate number of nursing staff were available to care for our patients during some particularly busy months.”

It cost around £750,000 for the trust to set up the staff bank.

The hospital had been spending £45 an hour using a premium agency before setting up the bank.

It had previously used NHS Professionals to help cover shifts which paid its nurses around £6.71 per hour.