WORK to slash agency staff at Oxfordshire's major hospitals could avoid any nurses being made redundant as part of £33m cost-saving measures.

Since July last year, senior nursing directors overseeing The Horton, Banbury, as well as Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital, Churchill Hospital and Radcliffe Infirmary, have clamped down on their "dependence" on agency staff, which cost them £13m in 2004-5.

But in 2005-6 their work helped save £1m, and in the first month of this financial year alone they reduced their costs by £600,000.

While in April 2005, they filled 7,418 shifts with temporary nursing workers equivalent to about 50 full-time staff only 3,381 shifts were filled with agency staff in the same month this year.

ORH assistant chief nurse Maggie Maxwell explained that the trust had become reliant on premium-rate agency staff in many speciality areas, because it could not fill vacancies.

She explained: "Once nurses realised we were serious about not using them as temporary staff they started coming to us to see if we had vacancies.

"Historically, we were quite reliant on these nurses through agencies, but now they are working directly for us. It's a win-win situation for the trust.

"As a result, I would very much hope we won't have to make any redundancies from nursing."

The ORH last week announced that about 600 posts would have to be slashed from the trust to help cut costs, including 225 from nursing and midwifery.

But chief nurse Julie Hartley-Jones told board members that, through flexible use of trust employees and a significant reduction in agency workers, she expected no nursing redundancies to be made.

Since August last year, as part of the agency project, she and her senior colleagues have been the only people within the ORH authorised to enlist high-cost agency staff, and manned a 24-hour hotline for ward sisters to call if they needed to cover shifts.

They also put a complete ban on premium-rate night, weekend and Bank holiday temporary workers.

She said: "We're being pretty fierce about it. I gave ward managers three months to do it but you would think the world had come to an end when I announced it. But theatres are still running and we're still running critical care.

"Bringing in agency workers was just habit.

"At one stage we were spending £30,000 a month on agency nurses alone. Now we don't use them at all.

"We can't stop using agency nurses altogether or leave patients vulnerable, but we've worked systematically to reduce our dependency on agency staff."