HOSPITAL staff from the European Union in North Hampshire are bucking the national trend by staying in their roles, despite 'significant uncertainty' over their status in the UK post-Brexit.

Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is one of the few trusts nationwide to bust the trend of fewer EU nationals joining NHS trusts and more leaving them now compared to before the Brexit vote.

From December 2014 to December 2015, 7.5 per cent of staff leaving the trust were EU nationals, compared to 6.7% in December 2016 to June 2017, while in 2014/15, 8.6 per cent of new staff joining the trust were from the EU, which rose to 9.3% in 2016/17.

From the figures compiled by the BBC, 80 NHS trusts nationwide saw their percentage of EU leavers increase, 62 had a fall in the proportion of new staff coming from the EU while 29 had both experiences.

The national picture saw 5.6 per cent of leavers in 2014/15 being EU nationals, rising to 7.4 per cent in 2016/17 and joiners falling from 10 per cent to 8.2 per cent in the same period.

Alex Whitfield, chief executive of Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We value all of our excellent staff very highly and employ nurses, healthcare professionals and many other staff from all over the world. They bring great experience, are hugely valued and an extremely important part of our team, helping us to deliver a high standard of care for our patients.

“We are working hard to ensure that as many of our EU staff as possible are able to remain with us, no matter what happens regarding Brexit, and we are delighted that the ongoing uncertainty does not seem to be having an effect on the number of staff from the EU leaving and joining our trust.”

Across England, there are around 135,000 EU nationals working in the NHS and adult social care system, accounting for five per cent of the NHS workforce.

However, for Hampshire Hospitals, the figure is 6.53 per cent of the permanent workforce which are EU or European Economic Area nationals.

NHS Employers said the vote to leave the EU had created “significant uncertainty” for the 58,000 EU nationals working in the health service

A Department of Health spokeswoman said: “There are 3,193 more EU nationals working in the NHS than at the time of the referendum — we have been absolutely clear that these staff play a vital role in the NHS and want to see their excellent work continue long after the UK leaves the EU.

“However, we recognise the NHS also needs more home-grown staff, so we’ll be training we'll be training an extra 1,500 doctors and 10,000 nurses, midwives and allied health professionals a year by 2020 to ensure the NHS has the workforce it needs both now and in the future.”