Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust cuts deficit to £3.8m

However, although in deficit, the trust’s board papers for February reveal that its financial situation is in line with the recovery plan it agreed with NHS South West.

During January the trust recorded an improvement of £800,000, “due to additional contract and non-recurrent income”.

The trust is forecasting that it will break even by the end of 2010-11, but this depends on “further actions being identified”. The organisation still has to identify savings worth £6.7m as part of its Cost Improvement Programme for 2010-11.

Meanwhile depreciation and interest charges are £0.5m higher than budgeted, non pay expenditure is £2.4m over budget – two thirds of which was due to “under delivery of cost improvment programmes”. The rest was caused by in-year cost pressures and variations in activity.

Pay was £3.1m over budget to the end of November, mostly due to overspends against medical and dental budgets.