WORK to cut the number of agency staff at Oxfordshire's major hospitals could avoid any nurses being made redundant as part of £33m cost-saving measures.

Since July last year, senior nursing directors overseeing Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital, Churchill Hospital and Radcliffe Infirmary, and the Horton, Banbury, have clamped down on their "dependence" on agency staff, which cost them £13m in 2004-5. But in 2005-6 their work helped save £1m, and in the first month of this financial year alone they reduced their costs by £600,000.

While in April 2005, they filled 7,418 shifts with temporary nursing workers equivalent to about 50 full-time staff only 3,381 shifts were filled with agency staff in the same month this year. ORH assistant chief nurse Maggie Maxwell explained that the trust had become reliant on premium-rate agency staff in many speciality areas, because it could not fill vacancies.

She explained: "Once nurses realised we were serious about not using them as temporary staff they started coming to us to see if we had vacancies.

"Historically, we were quite reliant on these nurses through agencies, but now they are working directly for us. It's a win-win situation for the trust.

"As a result, I would very much hope we won't have to make any redundancies from nursing." The ORH last month announced that about 600 posts would have to be cut from the trust to help cut costs, including 225 from nursing and midwifery.

But chief nurse Julie Hartley-Jones told board members that, through flexible use of trust employees and a significant reduction in agency workers, she expected no nursing redundancies to be made.

Since August, she and her senior colleagues have been the only people within the ORH allowed to enlist high-cost agency staff.