Thirty Filipino nurses are to be recruited to ease the nursing shortages at Crawley Hospital and East Surrey Hospital, Redhill.

Surrey and Sussex Healthcare Trust needs a total of 171 full-time nurses to make up the full complement of 1,215 full and part-time nurses and midwives.

The Filipino nurses will be on two-year contracts which will ease the shortage until the 207 students currently training are ready to take up positions.

Two of the trust's staff will go to the Philippines this autumn to interview prospective nurses with the help of an experienced and reputable local agency.

The new nurses will take three to four months to arrive here. They will then join the trust's adaptation programme for up to six months.

Once on the wards, a senior ward sister will work as the programme co-ordinator to ensure the nurses are well supported.

The nurses will be housed in Dorking. Part of the £105,000 cost of the scheme will go towards refurbishing the accommodation.

The trust spent more than £2 million last year on agency nurses. It expects to save £300,000 a year through this initiative.

Nursing director Shona Brown said: "This fits as part of the NHS plan.

"It recognises the need to recruit nurses from abroad and to give a consistent and sustained quality of care to patients through permanently employed staff."

A trust spokeswoman said it had difficulty recruiting staff because of a national nurse shortage and because of the high costs of housing in the area.

The trust recently had a successful recruitment drive for new nurses.

It encouraged trained nurses with families to return to work by providing flexible hours.