News / Financial position worsens

Month nine figures from the bodies, which are to be merged to form NHS Improvement in April, said trusts had a year-to-date deficit of £2.26bn (£622m worse than plan) with a forecast outturn of £2.37bn. Financial improvement measures of £452m, identified by providers following calls for urgent action from Monitor and the TDA in January, are included in the year-end forecast.

The national bodies, which regulate foundation and NHS trusts, said this level of deficit was neither sustainable nor affordable. They would work ‘relentlessly’ to reduce the deficit to the control total of £1.8bn.

NHS Improvement chief executive designate Jim Mackey (pictured) warned that ‘further improvements will be required by the whole NHS at pace and scale to tackle the current financial and operational challenges it faces’.

Capital to revenue transfers will be part of the package of measures to reduce the deficit. At Q3, capital expenditure was £1.13bn (32%) less than planned. The Q3 report said providers have identified £320m of capital expenditure that can be safely deferred to support local capital to revenue transfers.

Q3 figures also show that 179 of the 240 providers reported a deficit at month nine, including 131 acute trusts, driven by agency staff costs, delayed transfers of care and failure to deliver cost improvement plans.