NHS overspend climbs to record £790m

The National Health Service is heading for a record overspend at a time of record growth, according to the latest returns from hospitals and health authorities. Senior executives said yesterday the service in England was heading for a £790m overspend at the end of January - up from the £620m that was forecast in only December.

In September, Sir Nigel Crisp, the NHS chief executive, told the service it must reduce the overspend to £200m this financial year.

The Department of Health yesterday refused to confirm thefigure, but Chris Ham, professor of health service management at Birmingham University, said the fact that the numbers "are going north rather than heading south so late in the financial year is really bad news".

The rising deficit is undermining the position of Sir Nigel, who has presided over six years of record rises in NHS spending but during which underlying problems in finances and structure appear not to have been tackled.

Last week he issued a bulletin warning that the financial position was "serious". Trust and health authority chief executives, many of whom will soon have to reapply for their jobs, were warned he was taking "a direct and personal interest" in their performance.

Organisations projecting a break-even were told they must now make a surplus to offset overspending elsewhere.

Prof Ham, a former head of strategy at the health department, said the warning implied "a sense of desperation at the top of the office". "There is real pressure to show that things are being done, even though there is very little NHS organisations can do to turn things round with only five weeks of the financial year to go," he said.

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