Nurse stole £72,000 claiming he worked fake shifts at NHS mental health unit

An nurse stole tens of thousands of pounds from a unit after "abusing his position" and claiming to have worked hundreds of extra shifts.

Dean Armitage worked as a ward manager at an unnamed facility in run by the Greater Manchester Mental Health Foundation Trust (GMMH). The 33-year-old was given access to the trust's shift booking system, allowing him to create, assign and authorise additional shifts, but "abused his position" to backdate overtime and pocket additional payments. Armitage has now been sentenced to more than a year behind bars after his ill-gotten gains were discovered.

The reports that Bradford Crown Court heard on Thursday that Armitage started abusing his role at the height of the Covid pandemic in April 2020, when he entered backdated shifts into the NHS staff bank. The bank allows employees to pick up extra shifts on top of contracted hours, enabling them to help cover potential staff shortages.

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A British Medical Association (BMA) report released in 2024 found that, at the time, working overtime had "become the norm" to plug staffing gaps that had existed long before the pandemic took hold.

But prosecutors said Armitage paid for night shifts he never worked, with the higher rate entries placed after the fact not appearing on rotas, and not arousing suspicion.

He continued to claim for these shifts until October 2021 and claimed £76,632.72 and holiday pay for 185 fraudulently claimed shifts, according to the NHSCFA.

Irregularities not spotted until the following month, when the nurse, from Armitage, Bradford West, was suspended as the trust's Local Counter Fraud Specialist (LCFS) investigated.

He was caught out after investigators found his biometric data was not used to enter the "medium secure" site during the shift hours he had claimed and was paid for. He was ultimately charged with Fraud by Abuse of Position, and pleaded guilty at Bradford Crown Court last November.

Armitage was sentenced by a judge to 18 years in jail, and he has been sacked by GMMH for gross misconduct, with the trust having referred him to the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), which has in turn suspended him.

Ben Harrison, Head of Operations at the NHSCFA said: “We are pleased with the outcome of this investigation. I want to thank the trust, alongside both the LCFS and NHSCFA colleagues, for the action they took in this case.

"Armitage clearly exploited his position of trust to divert NHS funding from much-needed patient care.

“This case highlights the importance and effectiveness of the local counter fraud efforts across the NHS in uncovering and taking action against individuals who commit this kind of fraud.”