East Cheshire Trust £4.1m behind on savings plans

One-off, or “non recurrent”, savings worth £1m were “offsetting this to some degree”, the report stated, but performance against the plan overall was “heavily reliant on managing down day-to-day expenditure whilst recurrent CIP schemes can be generated”.

All business units of the trust were “managing vacancies flexibly” to offset a “significant overspend on non-pay” costs, which resulted from the failure to hit savings targets, it explained.

Net pay costs were £1.5m below plan, while non-pay budgets were overspent by £3.5m.

The report adds: “ A consequence of the underlying adverse variance from plan on operational budgets is adding pressure on cash flow. The trust continues to push for early payment of outstanding debt to support improved payments to creditors.”

The trust maintained its forecast of a £250,000 surplus for the year, but the report warned it could “identify a downside scenario” in which savings shortfalls, PCT contract penalties, and non-recurrent pressures resulted in a deficit of £5.8m.

It stated that “at this stage there is not sufficient certainty to amend the forecast position”.