News story

3rd October 2003

MP Warns of Service Cuts After Frenchay/Southmead Deficit Report

Northavon MP Steve Webb has warned that he fears cuts in local health services in the wake of the huge financial deficit at North Bristol NHS Trust. The MP was speaking following the publication of a report by accountants Deloitte and Touche into the £44 million overspend at the Trust in 2002/03.

The report, commissioned by the Avon, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire Strategic Health Authority, found that there were severe failings of financial management at the Trust, which runs Frenchay and Southmead Hospitals. The report said that there was a “climate of fear” at Board level at North Bristol Trust which meant that staff who had concerns about the serious financial situation were afraid to report their concerns to senior management. It found that the overspend had arisen in part from extra spending to meet NHS targets and from a massive overspend on agency nursing staff, as well as from a failure to make planned efficiency savings.

The Trust has been loaned money to cover last year’s deficit and a further £28 million towards this year’s shortfall, and is now seeking to make efficiency savings to cut a further £12 million from the budget. It is expected to take up to four years to get the Trust’s finances on an even keel.

Steve Webb, who visited the Trust last week (Thursday 2nd) to receive a briefing on the contents of the report, said:

“Financial management at the North Bristol Trust appears to have been a complete shambles. It is vital that changes are put in place so that there is proper scrutiny of how the taxpayer’s money is being spent. I am also seriously concerned that the Trust and the Health Authority are not being honest with us about the effects of financial recovery on the quality of local health services. If sorting out the deficit means cutting services then the public has a right to know. I will take a lot of convincing that this can all be achieved by so-called “efficiency savings”.