West Midlands NHS hospitals in “very challenging” financial position

Members of the Birmingham and Solihull (BSol) Integrated Care Board was told that its month eight position of the current financial year showed a deficit of £80.2 million – £64 million worse off than planned at this stage.

As a result, NHS England (NHSE) has moved BSol into ‘NOF 4’ oversight which will see a review undertaken to ensure all appropriate actions are being taken to improve the position.

Bosses said they were working closely NHSE on identifying additional ways to recover the deficit and achieve the agreed break even plan.

One of the main drivers for the deficit is an increase in substantive pay although spend on agency staff continues to be reduced.

Despite the bleak position, there is hope that an ‘audit adjustment’ could see the £80 million deficit reduced by £43 million.

Paul Athey, chief finance officer, said: “We continue to be in a very difficult financial position so at Month 8, we are reporting an £80.2 million deficit, which is £64 million from plan.

“If I was to put a slightly positive spin on that, that is a £3 million deficit in month which is quite considerably lower than any other deficit in the year.

“Some of the actions we have talked about in our recovery plans are clearly starting to bite and having an impact there, particularly around reductions in temporary staffing.

“We continue to discuss with the NHSE national team around the way in which an audit adjustment at UHB is treated.

“We believe that under the rules we should be accounting for the impact of that against the 24/25 control total.

“That’s £43 million to adjust the £80 million current deficit position, we’d be reporting a £37 million deficit which whilst still a very significant number is much closer to the level we need to find solutions for the remainder of this financial year.

“We have been working across all of our organisations to work through these further opportunities to close that position down.

“At this point, we have identified a further set of interventions which if we deliver those signed off close that gap down further to £29 million.

“We continue to work on a set of further opportunities and we’ve got discussions this week whether those opportunities are likely to be able to be realised and, if they are, whether they provide us with a route back to our break even plan.

“It continues to be very challenging as you’d expect delivering financial efficiencies at this stage of the year with all of the other clinical and operational pressures.”