NURSES at Hampshire Hospitals will not take part in industrial strike action next month, however, their colleagues working for the ambulance service will.

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) announced that, if progress is not made by the end of January to negotiate the current year’s NHS pay deal, its members in England and Wales will go on strike again on February 6 and 7.

Members previously went on strike on December 15 and 20 and January 18 and 19.

READ MORE: Nurses from Hampshire hospitals will not join RCN strike

However, staff at Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (HHFT) will not take part in the upcoming strike.

The trust, which runs Basingstoke, Andover and Winchester hospitals, said its staff are not taking part and it is not impacted by the strike.

Last year, Alex Whitfield, chief executive of HHFT, told the trust’s board of directors at a meeting that there were “insufficient votes for industrial action to be taken”.

Instead, hospital staff held a ‘peaceful demonstration’ in support of striking nurses and colleagues.

The RCN said the government has “refused to engage in the formal negotiations which would stop nursing strikes”.

Its dispute is about NHS pay for this financial year. It said the government has “wasted chances to avert strike action”.

It said the February strikes will be “the highest intensity in our history” being held at 73 NHS trusts in England, compared to 44 in December and 55 in January.

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Members from neighbouring trusts are taking part in the strike including at the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust and University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust.

South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust, which serves several counties including Hampshire and Berkshire, is also taking part in the strike.

RCN general secretary and chief executive Pat Cullen said: “We are doing this in a desperate bid to get ministers to rescue the NHS. The only credible solution is to address the tens of thousands of unfilled jobs – patient care is suffering like never before.”

The RCN says the economic argument for paying nursing staff fairly is clear when billions of pounds is being spent on agency staff to plug workforce gaps.

In the last year, 25,000 nursing staff around the UK left the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) register.