A CRISIS is looming in our hospitals, our care homes and our community nursing services which must be averted now.

Nurses recruited after 2011 from outside of Europe will be removed from the UK after they have spent six years here, simply because they are not earning at least £35,000, because of this Government’s changes to immigration rules.

This new rule makes no sense in a profession where few can hope to achieve such a wage in the prescribed timescale.

Across the South West hundreds of nursing staff could be affected damaging services and compromising the safety of patients.

We are in the middle of a severe nursing shortage in the South West and those nurses recruited from abroad are essential to us being able to continue to provide care to patients. They were recruited at a cost of thousands of pounds to the NHS and are filling gaps in our workforce that we cannot fill ourselves due to previous cuts to nurse training places.

These nurses have come to our region to care for us, our families, our friends and we need to keep them because without their help, our services could grind to a halt.

The Royal College of Nursing is calling for the Government to act now to address this anomaly by ensuring nurses are among the professions exempt from this rule. We are also calling for an increase in nurse training places so that in the future we are less reliant on other countries for our nursing workforce.

Lors Alford

Chair of Royal College of South West regional Board and RCN Council member