Portsmouth trust doubles deficit

August board papers said that at the end of July, the trust had a deficit of £4.2m, against a target of £2m.

“This variance is largely driven by the phasing of unallocated or unidentified cost improvement programmes.

“CIP delivered at month 4 equates to £1.6m against a budgeted plan of £4.0m. The resulting £2.4m variance is partly mitigated by favourable of £0.7m in workforce cost.”