THE BRADFORD district’s two hospital trusts could still have £12.5m left in their budgets at the end of this financial year despite pressures on beds and resources, it has been revealed.

Last year, the Trusts had posted a combined deficit of £7.5m, but a new Government fund set up to stabilise NHS finances has come to the rescue to help keep health providers out of the red, with the leftover money being re-invested back into patient care.

NHS data published this week showed nine months into spending for 2016/17, Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (NHSFT) and Airedale NHS Foundation Trust’s budgets were £124,000 better off than they had planned for.

Finance bosses at Bradford Teaching Hospitals are forecasting they will be £7m in the black by the end of March while Airedale has predicted a surplus of £5.5m. Surplus budget money at Bradford NHSFT has in the past gone towards supporting BRI’s new £28m wing housing children’s and elderly care wards as well as a state-of-the-art intensive care unit.

The Trusts’ 2016/2017 forecasts are a stark contrast to the previous financial year when Bradford NHSFT had a deficit of £6.5m on its £369m budget, blamed on uncontrollable demands, and Airedale NHS Foundation Trust overspent by almost £1m on its budget of £150m.

The Trusts have been helped by NHS England’s national Sustainability and Transformation Funding (STF) which is allocated to acute health service providers and is based on the costs linked with delivering emergency care.

By the end of December, third quarterly figures showed Bradford NHSFT had a £5.7m spending surplus which was £115,000 more than it had planned , said the Trust’s Director of Finance Matthew Horner. He added: “The Trust has an annual surplus plan of £9m and is currently forecasting a surplus in excess of £7m by the end of March.”

Bradford Teaching Hospitals had been allocated £11m from STF but expects to get £9.66m because it has not hit government-set targets of seeing 95 per cent of patients within four hours and has not delivered referral standards of having no less than 92 per cent of patients on the waiting list, waiting longer than 18 weeks. Airedale is on track to get all its £5.3m STF funding and by the end of December was £9,000 better off than it had planned with a surplus of £4.1m. It’s annual budget for this financial year is £159m.

Andrew Copley, director of finance, said: “At this stage of the financial year, we are still expecting to achieve our financial plan, albeit this continues to be an increasing challenge due to the continued increased levels of emergency activity and pressures on the ability to discharge patients.

“Our annual plan, once published, will set out how we will use our resources over the next two years. At this stage our plans have not been signed off.”

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