Solent blames agency costs for unplanned deficit

Solent Trust is only one of six NHS trusts to have gone into unplanned deficit halfway through the 2014-15 financial year.

The trust, which had planned to be in net surplus of £1.2m in October has also highlighted the cost of replacing inherited IT systems as a contributor to its worsening financial position.

Documents presented at the provider’s governing board last week state: “The trust has under achieved against its financial plan due to CIP under recovery, agency usage, and income under recovery along with increased infrastructure costs as previous risks have crystallised.”

Solent has spent £3.7m to date this year on agency staff, against a planned budget of £36,000, documents disclose.

The trust is now forecasting that it will end 2014-15 with a £5m deficit.

A trust spokesman said that due to some “non-recurrent” staff contracts, it had not been possible to hire permanent staff due to the added risk and unavoidable cost.

He added that while the move from the trust’s previous IT provider had been planned, it had run into difficulties resulting in some double running costs.

Solent Trust chief executive Sue Harriman said: “A critical mix of circumstances, within and outside of our control, created complex financial challenges for us which resulted in an unplanned deficit by October of £7.1m.

“Whilst the national healthcare budget has not reduced, our funding has not increased despite a rise in demand on services, and as a mental health and community trust we were subjected to a greater tariff deflator than the acute sector.

Ms Harriman added: “Although we are now even more successful in bringing patients home early from hospital and stopping them from going in inappropriately in the first place, this increases demand on community care and the funding hasn’t quite caught up with this yet.

“We are, though, in productive discussions with commissioners to address this.”