SWINDON nurses and midwives are to be given an average of £500 extra on their annual wage in a bid to help beat inflated property prices.

The new cost of living allowance was announced by Prime Minister Tony Blair at an NHS conference in Brighton yesterday.

The news was welcomed by the director of nursing at Swindon's Princess Margaret Hospital, Elaine Strachen Hall, who attended the conference.

She said: "I am delighted that the difficulties caused for nurses by the high cost of housing in Swindon have been recognised.

"Swindon is an expensive area, which means that it is difficult to buy a house on the average nurse's wage, which is about £18,000.

"It was a good conference with a focus on patients, which I think is important."

She agreed that while an extra £500 a year would not solve the financial problems faced by some nurses living and working in Swindon, it was a step in the right direction.

The payments are being made to qualified nurses, midwives and health visitors across a swathe of the south of England, where house prices have rocketed in the last two years.

The exact breakdown of the money will be announced by Heath Secretary Alan Millburn next week.

Swindon has experienced problems in recruiting nursing staff, and a factor in this is because staff cannot afford to live in the region.

In February, Wiltshire house prices leaped by a massive 19 per cent, with the average home in Swindon rising from £72,837 to £87,032.

The South West has seen the largest price increase outside London because of the sheer number of people chasing each property.

The cash boost will come on top of present cost of living allowances and will start from April 1, 2001.

It is hoped that the extra money will help encourage the retention and recruitment of nursing staff, but the fact remains that there is an acute national shortage of nurses, with 20,000 vacant posts nationally and a shortage of more than 50 at Swindon Hospitals.

A two-week Evening Adver-tiser Campaign to boost the number of nurses working at Prin- cess Margaret Hospital has led to the more than 20 enquiries.

Swindon and Marlborough NHS has tried to address the recruitment problem through a range of initiatives.

These include a successful return to practice nursing course, the expansion of its nursing bank to allow staff to work irregular and part-time shifts plus the recruitment of nurses from outside Britain.