Leicester and Rutland: Health system spending well over budget
Some services will be reviewed and some projects will be paused
Leicester and Rutland’s health system’s prediction of an £80 million shortfall this financial year is already in jeopardy.
The Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Integrated Care System which incorporates all the NHS services provided across the two counties predicted in the spring that it would run £80m over its budget, but just five months into the year, it is well off target.
It has spent £18.8m more than planned on top of the £46m extra it thought it would have spent at this point in the year.
Most of the overspends are coming from the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, led by chief executive Richard Mitchell, which runs the three hospitals in the county. It has predicted that it will spend an additional £64.9m over its budget and is already on track to do worse than that.
On Wednesday the hospital trust declared a critical incident and asked people to avoid the accident and emergency department, which was well over capacity.
The health organisations got together for a public meeting of the LLR integrated care board yesterday and the board’s finance officer Robert Toole said the situation was ‘very challenging’ and said there had been a ‘stop and pause’ on some projects, some contracts were being reviewed and service specifications would be looked at. Senior bosses will also meet in the coming days for crunch talks.
The finance officer’s report said: “The year-to-date variance reflects pressures relating to as yet unfunded additional (ERF Elective Recovery Funding) activity; inflation, prescribing growth, urgent and emergency care pressures and industrial action at the end of June.”
In the most recent 2023-24 financial year the ICS overspent by £68m. In June the finance assurance committee gave the budget a red rating and said all mitigations had been exhausted.
The ICS is made up of the budgets of the hospitals group, the Leicestershire Partnership Trust (LPT) -which runs community and mental health services – and the ICB. The LPT, run by chief executive Angela Hillary, is predicting it will come in on target although it is currently £1m over budget. The ICB is currently £14.8m over budget.
The Health Service Journal reported earlier this summer that three quarters of the 42 integrated care systems in the country are predicting they will bust their budgets.
New health secretary Labour’s Wes Streeting said that when he came into office in July that the NHS is broken. His department is currently reviewing the hospital new build programme promised by Conservative PM Boris Johnson’s government.
Leicestershire and Rutland Integrated Care Board have said:
“In common with the majority of health systems across the country, we are in a challenging financial situation in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.
"Senior managers and staff from the organisations that make up the LLR Integrated Care System work closely together and focus on providing services with the funding available.
"We are working to improve the financial position, by looking at ways we can provide services more effectively and efficiently, while continuing to maintain high standards of care for our patients across LLR.”