Private agencies rake in bumper profits from hiring out locum doctors to hospitals – which cost the NHS over £500million a year

The NHS is being ‘ripped off’ by private agencies raking in bumper profits from hiring out doctors to hospitals, the Mail can reveal.

Fuelled by a chronic recruitment crisis, health chiefs are being bounced into handing over an estimated £500million a year to fill empty locum shifts with agency staff.

One agency director alone paid themselves more than £1million last year as bosses pocket around 20 per cent of the fee paid by the struggling health service.

It has become so lucrative – profits in the sector have soared six-fold in just three years – that junior doctors are being encouraged by their peers on social media to jump ship into the private sector.

Agency bosses desperate to recruit more staff are in turn offering incentives, including iPads, spa breaks and furniture vouchers worth £1,000.

Some agencies are trying to poach doctors by offering £5,000 Rolex watches and luxury holidays for referrals.

It comes after Health Secretary Wes Streeting vowed to ban the NHS from spending ‘eye-watering sums’ on temporary staff to plug 113,000 staffing vacancies.

Campaigners said the ‘rip-off’ firms should be ‘run out of town’.

Layla Moran MP, Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, said: ‘The provision of sufficient staffing throughout the NHS is a serious and complex issue, but it is unacceptable that locum agencies are making inordinate profits out of the NHS, when we all know that the NHS is under immense financial strain.’

The Mail audited ten leading locum agencies to find out how much money was being made from fees charged to the taxpayer-funded NHS.

Instead of covering the annual wage of 14,000 full-time nurses, the estimated £500million in fees is instead boosting the profits of private firms.

The NHS is already spending more than £3billion on temporary workers like nurses, where NHS trusts are paying up to £2,000 for a single nursing shift, with strike action driving costs up further.

The health service has fought hard to bring down spending on agency staff and brought in a salary cap of 150 per cent of standard pay in 2015.

But trusts can make exceptions if necessary and costs ballooned during the pandemic, with spending now up by 25 per cent on 2019/20.

Some agencies have seen their profits skyrocket as a result.

Cook Recruitment Group, which runs National Locums, Locum People and The GP Team, reported an operating profit of £2.9million in 2024, up from just £483,523 in 2021, a six-fold increase.

Its employees have previously been rewarded with an all-expenses paid trip to the Caribbean, where they were pictured sipping cocktails at a luxury hotel.

The business is a family affair, with directors David Cook, his brother Glenn and wife Jenny founding the firm in 2018. The highest paid director pocketed £152,000 last year.

But this is small change compared to the £1,134,017 paid to an unnamed ID Medical Group director in 2023.

Dr Mo Sacoor founded the firm in 2002 and – judging by his Facebook posts – has enjoyed the fruits of its success ever since.

Photos show the football mad 85-year-old enjoying various lavish trips to Portugal, including the Champions League Final in 2014, the World Cup in Brazil that same year, and the Caribbean.

ID Medical Group Holdings posted an operating profit of £7.8million in 2023, up from £3million in 2021.

In January this year, the business was sold to US based firm Aya Healthcare, with Dr Sacoor stepping down from the company. Its latest accounts show profits dropped to £6million in 2024.

Acacium Group, the largest locum group in the UK, posted revenue of £1.4billion in 2023, around half of which came from UK operations. 

It posted a post-tax profit of £3.1million. However, this was down from £50million in 2022, with chief financial officer Thomas Richards citing health services’ desire to ‘reduce spending on contingent workforce following the end of the Covid pandemic’.

Despite declining profits, its highest paid director still made £341,000 last year.

One director, Adrien Faure, is married to Maria Baibakova, the daughter of a Russian billionaire, who once wrote an article for Tatler magazine detailing the best way to fire a servant.

The group, which operates Thornbury Nursing Services, has previously offered doctors and nurses an extraordinary array of incentives to take up locum work, fuelling concerns that medics are being lured away from full-time NHS jobs only to be loaned back at greater cost.

Incentives offered by Acacium reportedly included iPads, Spa breaks, worth hundreds of pounds and furniture vouchers worth £1,000.

Other agencies have tried to poach doctors by offering £5,000 Rolex watches and luxury holidays for referrals.

Mr Streeting’s plans could see trusts banned from using agencies to cover gaps in entry level jobs, such as healthcare assistants and domestic support workers.

Agencies could also be banned from hiring back medics that leave permanent NHS jobs.

The Health Secretary told The Mail: ‘For too long desperate hospitals have been forced to pay eye-watering sums of money on temporary staff, costing the taxpayer billions, and pulling experienced staff out of the NHS. We’re not going to let the NHS get ripped off anymore.’

Dennis Reed, of campaign group Silver Voices, congratulated the Mail for exposing the scale of the scandal.

He said: ‘It would be much more economical to run an in-house NHS staff bank rather than paying these rip-off agency fees. These parasitic locum agencies should be run out of town.’

However, he added that Mr Streeting needed ‘to provide an alternative solution for recruiting temporary staff’.

An NHS spokesman said the health service was ‘committed to ensuring every penny of taxpayer money is used wisely’.

Neil Carberry, of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC), which represents companies supplying temporary staff, has said any ban on locum staff would be ‘a serious mistake’.

He added: ‘Agency workers are essential to maintaining safe staffing levels and ensuring services run smoothly.

‘These workers provide the flexibility that the NHS desperately needs, and many choose this route because it offers a better work-life balance.

‘Removing this option would only put more strain on an already under-resourced system and make staffing shortages even worse as staff lose patience with poor NHS management.’

Cook Recruitment Group referred The Mail to the REC’s statement.

A spokesman for ID Medical said its ‘healthcare workers have been integral during times of crisis to ensure patients have the care they need’.

He added that the group worked within price caps set by the Government and ‘has helped NHS trusts to move away from high cost, off-framework agencies’.

A spokesman for Acacium Group said it offers ‘a valuable and flexible service that helps guarantee safe staffing levels’.

He added: ‘We have a proven track record of delivering both productivity improvements and cost savings across a number of major NHS trusts.’