HOSPITAL managers are considering giving their lowest paid workers a “living wage” to counter the city’s high cost of living.

Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust chiefs say they are looking at introducing a higher hourly rate than the £6.31 minimum wage to help reduce a high staff turnover.

The “living wage” is about £7.65 an hour.

Trust managers, responsible for Oxford’s John Radcliffe and Churchill hospitals, the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre and Banbury’s Horton General Hospital, are concerned Oxford’s high living costs mean they can’t retain staff and as a result use more temporary workers to fill in the gaps.

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Director of organisational development and workforce Mark Power, said: “We employ around about 11,500 staff and just like every other trust in the country at the moment one of our challenges is to ensure that we maintain sufficient staffing levels and a healthy level of turnover. This is a hot topic within the organisation.

“Our turnover at the moment is around 12 per cent a year which is higher than we would wish and we have some vacancy problems with specific staff groups.

“What staff are telling us when we ask why they are leaving is that one issue is around the cost of living and we are having some discussions around the living wage.

“When you look at London trusts there is a significant weighting and we are competing with that.

“We are looking carefully at what we could potentially do in the way of London weighting.”

The trust could not say how many of its staff were on the minimum wage or what effect a £1.34 an hour increase would have on its budget.

A total of £6.4m – “about half” the contingency budget – has been spent on agency staff in the first four months of the financial year.

In 2014, 60 per cent of NHS staff did not get a pay rise and only those at the top of their bands got a one per cent unconsolidated lump sum.

And earlier this month the Oxford Mail revealed that eight trust directors received between £85,000 and £125,000 in bonuses last year.

Unison trust convenor Mark Ladbrooke said staff will join a national strike on Monday over pay.

He said: “The value of NHS pay is falling and the NHS is having huge difficulty recruiting staff in one of the most expensive areas of the country. Its time for our highly paid directors to grasp the nettle and tell the government that staff need decent pay.”

He said: “If the pay issue can’t be agreed through negotiation then we have no alternative but strike.”

Labour-run Oxford City Council is the only local authority in Oxfordshire which has been accredited by the Living Wage Foundation for paying its employees more than £8 an hour.

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