Royal Berkshire risk rating belies deficit

The trust has a year to date deficit of £2.8m against a planned £200,000 surplus.

Year to date income for the first half of 2012-13 was £160.5m, £3.1m more than budget, mainly due to higher drugs income and extra funding from commissioners.

However, at £163.3m, expenditure was £5.9m worse than planned.

Pay costs were £1.1m above budget, while cost improvement plans yielded £900,000 less than expected.

Capital expenditure of £7.9m compared with a budget of £7.2m. This was driven by the implementation over the summer of the Cerner Millennium electronic patient record system.

There were “ongoing issues with accurate capture of activity off EPR”.