King's needs £223m DHSC loan this year, board reveals

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King’s says it will need nearly nearly quarter of a billion pounds in loans in 2017-18
The £1bn turnover trust will owe DHSC £677m by the end of March, report says
In-year deficit could exceed £100m, as month nine position slips by £32m
Last year-end forecast deficit was £92.2m

A London teaching hospital has predicted it will need to borrow nearly a quarter of a billion pounds from the Department of Health and Social Care this financial year, it emerged yesterday.

Documents published by King’s College Hospital Foundation Trust today said the organisation “is currently forecasting a loan (revenue and capital) of £222.7m for 2017-18”.

Interim revenue loans account for £154.1m of the total, with loans for capital projects accounting for the rest.

The trust has already received £138m from the DHSC so far this year.

King’s reported a total “borrowing balance outstanding” of £677.1m by the end of March. This breaks down as £395m in “revenue support loans” and “revolving working capital facilities”. It had DHSC capital loans of £133.9m and private finance initiative obligations of £147.3m.

Since being placed in financial special measures in December the trust must pay interest on loans at six per cent, rather than the normal 1.5 or 3.5 per cent. It will have repaid £7.8m by the end of the year, the report said.

The £1bn turnover organisation’s most recent deficit forecast for the year is £92.2m. It made this prediction in December. The trust was this week unable to say what its position at the end of the year will be – although the revenue borrowing prediction for 2017-18 suggests it could be around £150m.

The King’s deficit at the end of month nine, the latest published figures, was £79m – £32m worse than planned.

On Monday, NHS Improvement is due to publish the quarter three performance of the provider sector, which will include the refreshed year-end forecast positions for trusts.

The trust received a £60m loan from the DHSC to expand its critical care unit this year but a report to the board said this work had so far cost £65.9m and was projected to reach £74.4m by March 2018.

At a board meeting on Wednesday, interim finance director Alan Goldsman said the trust was paying suppliers promptly and he and new trust chair Ian Smith said the working relationship with NHS Improvement was positive.

A financial recovery director has been appointed to the trust by the regulator.

Former NHS Improvement chief executive Jim Mackey singled King’s out for criticism on the reliability of its financial forecasts in an HSJ interview last year.

At its December meeting, trust chief executive Nick Moberley said when he joined in 2015 the underlying deficit was £140m and the trust had since managed to reduce it to nearer £100m.

The trust’s chair, chief operating officer and finance director left the trust in November and December.