One in every £10 spent on staff at a west London mental health trust is spent on agency staff, according to figures from NHS Choices.

The findings show 10% of all expenditure on staff at Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust, which provides care at St Charles Hospital Mental Health Unit in Ladbroke Grove, and The Gordon Hospital in Pimlico, goes on agency staff.

The figures show the expenditure on agency staff as a percentage of total staff expenditure reported by the hospital's trust and the data is taken from Financial Accounts (Department of Health, Monitor, NHS Trust Development Authority) for 2013/14.

A spokesman from Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust said: “This month we’re at 7%. Like most NHS Trusts in London we have a vacancy rate that we are working hard to recruit to. Safety comes first and sometimes you need staff fast, for example where observation levels go up for unwell patients.

"We have our own 'bank' we use, which is considerably cheaper than agencies. We also emphasise quality so any candidates for nursing vacancies here have an assessment for literacy and numeracy and then they meet patients in group settings, these views are fed into the overall assessment process over the day.

"Clearly the important thing is to have good staff, preferably permanently employed.”

It comes after a Royal College of Nursing (RCN) report revealed nearby Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust spent £1,121,864 on “expensive” agency nurses in the second quarter of the 2014/15 financial year.

And an RCN Freedom of Information request also revealed that west London's NHS trusts spent £44,192,134 on agency staff from July to September last year.