Hospital trusts in 'financial special measures'

The organisation which funds healthcare in Lancashire and South Cumbria has been put into the equivalent of financial special measures, along with three of its hospital trusts, the BBC can exclusively reveal.

The trusts which run the Royal Preston, Chorley, Royal Blackburn, Burnley and Blackpool Victoria hospitals have been told they are going to have to save tens of millions of pounds.

The Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board (ICB), which funds them, has to make more than £530m in efficiency savings this financial year, potentially cutting some services.

An ICB spokesman told BBC North West Tonight they welcomed the additional support from NHS England as they recognised the "severity of the situation".

He added that "dedicated" NHS staff were "working hard under difficult circumstances to continue delivering the best care".

The affected trusts, East Lancashire Hospitals Trust, Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Lancashire Teaching Hospitals Trust, have already slashed millions of pounds from their budgets and for months there has been a virtual recruitment freeze for non-clinical staff.

Last month, East Lancashire Hospitals Trust announced it would be cutting the free bus service between Blackburn, Burnley and Pendle hospitals at the end of March – saving £780,000 a year.

A local bus company has since announced a paid-for service running the same route.

Meanwhile, at Chorley hospital, a general medical ward which was built less than three years ago is to shut at the end of the financial year.

The announcement prompted a strike by the staff involved, who have been told they will be redeployed.

Lancashire Teaching Hospitals Trust said there were plans to repurpose the ward but confirmed that the move would save money.

All of the trusts in Lancashire and South Cumbria are funded by the Integrated Care Board, which is in serious financial difficulty.

This year it received a total budget of just over £5.2bn, which is used to run the entire health economy in the region, from hospitals to GPs, and it falls short of what the ICB needs to do that.

The organisation would need to shave more than £700m in costs from the services it currently provides in order to hit that target.

NHS England has already agreed that they can overspend by £175m this year, leaving £530m to find.

Some of those savings have already been made but NHS England is concerned about progress and has placed the ICB and the three hospital trusts in a form of special measures known as the Recovery Support Programme.

NHS England said it provided focused assistance to organisations and systems facing the most profound challenges.

In practice, this involves national teams going in to identify how things can be run more efficiently and cheaply.

But with cuts of just over 10% to find this year alone, some services look set to be affected.

The Royal Preston Hospital is also in need of ongoing maintenance work.

The hospital has previously had to close clinical areas because of flooding and has described parts of the building as "dilapidated".

Work was supposed to start on a new building in the early 2030s but last month the government announced that a new hospital might now be 18 years away.

The trust has previously announced that it faced a backlog of maintenance work totalling £157m and has since said that this new announcement would mean a "significant" amount of extra cash needed to keep the building useable.

The chief executive of Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB told the BBC that they welcomed the support from NHS England "as we recognise the severity of the situation that we are in".

Kevin Lavery said they took responsibility for the challenges they faced and recognised that there was more to be done about their financial position.

"Despite the hard work of colleagues across our system, we have unfortunately not made the improvements that we had hoped to by this point," he said.

"I can confidently say that our NHS workforce is dedicated to providing the highest standard of care for our communities and is working hard under difficult circumstances to continue delivering the best care day in, day out."

Mr Lavery said the ICB had "an opportunity here to ensure that the support and expertise from this programme helps us to make improvements which will ultimately support our system to deliver high quality, sustainable health services for the people of Lancashire and South Cumbria".

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