East Kent hospitals bosses to hold talks over £50m budget deficit

The Royal Victoria Hospital in Folkestone is one of the hospitals run by the trust

An NHS trust will hold crunch financial talks after a £14.4m overspend left it with an overall budget deficit of £50m.

At this point in the year the East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust (EKHT) was supposed to have a deficit of £35.9m.

The trust serves 700,000 people and one director said it was "struggling to cope and meet demand".

Hospital bosses previously stressed that financial problems do not impact their ability to provide services.

EKHT had overspent by £14.4m at the end of September and was warned earlier in the month that it could run out of cash by November.

At a meeting of the trust's board of directors, non-executive director Richard Oirschot said not exceeding the target deficit of £72m by April 2024 would be "extremely challenging".

"The activity levels arriving at our front door are still extraordinarily high and we're acutely aware as we walk into the winter period that this situation is likely to get worse," said Steward Baird, a non-executive director at EKHT.

Michelle Stevens, chief finance officer, said that unplanned events, such as industrial action, worsened the trust's finances.

A report showed the majority of the overspend was from failure to deliver planned efficiency savings, which cost the trust £11.49m.

The trust was working "to improve our productivity and improve our financial position" but patient safety was the "top priority", Ms Stevens said in a statement.

'Tough decisions'

A special meeting to discuss EKHT's finances is due to be held in the next few weeks.

Mr Baird said this would prove that the trust had "looked at all the tough decisions" and "really explored every avenue".

The trust had previously been placed in special measures from 2014 to 2017.

At its last overall inspection by the Care Quality Commission in 2021, the trust was rated as "requires improvement".

The trust has stressed that an NHS body cannot run out of money to the point of being unable to pay staff or run services.

Instead, when a trust runs out of money, its budget has to be reforecasted through a process called the National Protocol, in consort with NHS England, and new money made available.