News / NI NHS forced to find extra savings

Northern Ireland’s  health and social services sector remains in the dark over spending plans for the current financial year after the Assembly backed a revised Budget. The new approach means the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety (DHSSPS) will have to find an additional £113m in efficiency savings.

As Healthcare Finance went to press, health minister Michael McGimpsey, who has doggedly opposed the changes, had not revealed spending plans for 2010/11. The DHSSPS said: ‘The Department is finalising its spending plans and the minister will announce the detail of those plans in due course.’

The Assembly backed the revised Budget on 20 April. The DHSSPS was due to make £344m in cash-releasing efficiency savings in 2010/11, a figure set out in the three-year Budget passed in 2008. However, as the economic climate has worsened, Northern Ireland’s public services have been forced to find more savings.

After the Budget, the DHSSPS will have to find an additional £92m from revenue and £21.5m from capital. Its revenue allocation (departmental expenditure limit) will now increase by £29m to £4.3bn, after allowing for the savings and other adjustments, compared with the original proposals. The capital budget will fall by £16.5m to about £201m.     

However, the revised Budget document insisted key areas, such as current spending on health, had been protected. The DHSSPS revenue budget had been handed the lowest level of additional savings in percentage terms. This had been set at 2.1%, compared with the average of 2.6%, it said.