THE high cost of living in Oxfordshire is leaving health bosses struggling to fully staff mental health and community hospital wards.

Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust has failed to fully staff seven of its mental health and community hospital wards to the expected level during the past 22 months.

The Wenric, Kingfisher, Opal, Ruby, Witney Wenrisc, Wintle and Vaughan Thomas wards have all had six months or more where they have failed to fully staff 75 per cent of shifts to the expected levels during the last year.

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The Wenric Ward – a secure forensic mental health ward at Littlemore Health Centre – has failed to fully staff 75 per cent of shifts a month for the 22 months between April 2014 and January this year.

The Kingfisher ward, also at the health centre in Sandford Road, has only been fully staffed for four months during the same period.

Trust bosses heard last Wednesday that the staffing problems stem from high turnover and vacancy rates.

Nursing and clinical standards director Ros Alstead said the problems with the Wenric and Kingfisher wards were due to staff leaving last year.

She told the board that many of the posts at the Wenric ward had been filled and added: “Hopefully the position in Wenric is going to be improving.

“We are meanwhile staffing these with agency staff.

“We are using agency staff to bring these up to staffing levels.”

Ms Alstead said a lot of the problem came from retaining staff because of the high cost of living in Oxfordshire.

She added: “There is the impact of being in a high cost of living area.”

Oxford Health employs about 6,100 staff across mental health care, community hospitals and home healthcare. The trust’s vacancy rate for January was 9.6 per cent, meaning it has about 585 staff posts to fill.