HEALTH bosses in Bolton believe it has not felt the strain of EU staff leaving following the Brexit decision.

Figures have shown a national trend in EU nationals making up a larger share of staff leaving NHS jobs after the referendum than they did before it.

In Bolton workers from EU countries make four per cent of the 478 workforce leaving the Bolton NHS Foundation Trust between December 2014 to December 2015, this dropped to 1.9 per cent of 485 between the same period from 2015-16 but rose to 2.6 per cent of 271 in 2016 to June this year.

Meanwhile 14 EU nationals joined the trust, making up 2.7 per cent of new recruits, between 2014-15, this rose to 4.6 per cent of 630 in 2015-16 but dropped to 1.2 per cent of 514 in 2016-17.

While there has not been a consistent drop in EU staff or uptake, between 2014 and June, there has been one in the last two years.

However, the trust believes it has not experienced any extreme changes despite a forecast of 44 staff places needing filled this winter.

A spokesman said: "We haven’t felt a noticeable shift in the amount of staff from EU countries joining or leaving us at the trust.

"Going into winter, our efforts are concentrated on ensuring we have the right numbers of staff in place to cope with the demands of the season.

"We have qualified nurses joining us from the Philippines following our visit last year, we’ve recently welcomed 44 newly qualified nurses from local universities, and we continue to put all our efforts into open days and events to recruit new staff to join our team here in Bolton.

"We’re also continuing to develop our own staff, including extending the trainee nurse associate programme, upskilling staff in advanced nursing and looking to our leaders of the future and what their training needs are."

It also reported that it had received no concerns from its EU and non EU staff regarding their future following the vote to leave the EU.

While it has previously recruited in Spain, Portugal and Ireland it identified before Brexit that the availability of EU nurses was unlikely to meet its needs.

A national shortage of qualified nursing has emerged over the last few years but Bolton is recruiting newly qualified nurses from other universities as well as through the University of Bolton.

Nationally, in the last full year before the referendum - December 2014 to December 2015 - there were 7,535 EU nationals who left NHS jobs. That meant they made up 5.6 per cent of all NHS workers leaving their jobs.

The following year, they accounted for 6.6 per cent of all leavers and in the first six months of this year, they made up 7.4 per cent.