Paramedic crisis as staff are poached

London Ambulance Service is facing a staffing crisis, with up to 20 paramedics a month being lured to other parts of the country by "golden hellos" of up to £4,500.

Managers say the problem has grown in recent months, since ambulance services outside the capital introduced bonuses for new, qualified staff.

Staff turnover has doubled in the past three years and the LAS now has to spend an extra £2 million a year on recruitment. Bonuses and affordable housing are tempting vital staff to services in Essex, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and as far afield as Yorkshire and the West Country.

"Every paramedic who is tempted out of London is a potential life-saver who has been lost," said Eric Roberts, representative for the Unison union. "I know of people who have been offered so-called relocation payments to go to the West Country and York-shire.

"If we do not get extra funding, the service is going to implode. People are leaving because of the pay, but also because it is so busy in London and we are under pressure to achieve targets which are nearly impossible."

Geoff Martin, director of pressure group London Health Emergency said: "We cannot have a situation where other parts of the NHS are able to rip off London because they know we are having problems. The Government should be stepping in stop this.

"If staff are being offered £4,000, then the LAS should be offering them £4,000 to stay in the capital, but it doesn't have the resources. This is going to be disastrous for London. We already have the worst ambulance service in the country."

Poor pay is cited as the key reason for leaving in exit interviews of LAS staff. A service spokesman said: "The maximum a paramedic can earn in London is £20,000. If you are earning £20,000 and living somewhere like the West Country, then your money is going to go much further. We just do not have the resources to compete with golden hellos. We offer some of the best training and experience because of the volume of calls we deal with.

"That means people come to us and we invest in their training, then they often leave and work elsewhere."

A report to the LAS board states: "In certain parts of London, particularly west London, it is extremely difficult to attract sufficient numbers of applicants and almost impossible to attract part-time staff." It adds: "This has been exacerbated in recent months by the introduction of 'gold hellos' in some ambulance services."

A spokesman for the West Country Ambulance Service, based in Plymouth, said: "We offer a relocation bonus as a way of attracting trained staff. We have had a big recruitment drive." The service offers a £4,500 package for trained paramedics or technicians. So far, there have been four recruits from the capital but the spokesman said there had been many more inquiries from LAS staff.

The staffing crisis in London means some ambulances go out with only a technician and no paramedic. "Rapid response vehicles and motorbikes will be staffed by paramedics and prioritised for the most serious incidents, and technicians can carry out the vast majority of procedures that paramedics can to treat or stabilise a patient," said the LAS spokesman.

LAS chief executive Peter Bradley, a former front-line paramedic, is leading negotiations with London's 16 health authorities to secure additional funding for the service. An estimated £30million is needed make vital improvements including speeding up response times to emergencies, which are the worst in Britain. Only 34 per cent of 999 calls are responded to within eight minutes in London.