THERE are 700 nursing vacancies across three mid and south Essex hospitals, latest figures show.

Figures show the Mid and South Essex University Hospital Trust, which comprises Southend, Basildon and Broomfield hospitals had 14.58 per cent, 15.9 per cent and 35.6 per cent registered nurse vacancies respectively.

At Broomfield Hospital 252 nurses are needed to fill vacancies, while Basildon needs another 244 qualified nurses and 112 posts are empty at Southend.

The huge shortages reflect a national picture, with a leaked report indicating the Government is set to recruit tens of thousands of foreign nurses over the next five years to fill gaps on wards across the country.

Southend Hospital is already being proactive in recruiting nurses from abroad but progress appears to be slow.

Mike Fieldhouse, spokesman for the Save Southend NHS campaign, group said a decision to make student nurses pay for their own degrees played a big part in the recruitment difficulties, along with Brexit uncertainty which could see Southend’s Spanish nurses heading home.

He said: “These are shocking figures and it’s been like that for a long time now. Withdrawing the nurses’ bursary has compounded the problem greatly.

“Brexit has also had an impact. We’ve already seen a huge drop in the numbers of EU nurses coming here.”

Mr Fieldhouse added: “This is particularly the case with Spanish nurses as, if we leave the EU, any time they spend working here won’t be recognised by their country’s nursing professional body. They would be classed as not being up on the latest best practise.

“It is a terrible situation. Hospitals are having to rely on costly agency nurses. It’s madness.”

There are fears the shortage could affect Mid and South Essex Sustainability and Transformation partnership plans to streamline healthcare across the three hospitals, which are currently under review by the Health Secretary of State for Health.

Another spokeswoman for the group added: “The Mid and South Essex STP has consistently failed to respond to councillors with adequate answers on the bare bones of how they are going to robustly address the nursing shortage within the three hospitals.

“Their recruitment strategy is exceedingly weak against the backdrop of a national nursing crisis and attracting staff to a hospital group with huge uncertainties facing service locations, will hardly reassure applicants that their jobs will be close to home, stable and not require travel between the three hospital sites.

“The nursing crisis nationally is reaching critical levels following the removal of the training bursary. If every nurse who received a place at university for 2016 were to qualify as a nurse this year, we would still be short some 20,000 nurses.

“The dropout rate for nursing is around 25 per cent as nursing is a hard course, with lots of assessment and clinical criteria to fulfil; so realistically of the 28,000 students in 2016, only around 21,000 will qualify in 2019 – this is on top of 33,000 nurses who have left each year. It’s time to return the bursary as a bare minimum.”

The hospitals were asked to comment.