Scarborough Hospital Trust Receives £2.5m to Cover Strike Losses

Wednesday, 6 December 2023 06:00

By Adam Laver, Local Democracy Reporter

York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has received £2.5m to cover losses from industrial action between April and October.

Andrew Bertram, the trust’s finance director, announced that he had been told the funds had been confirmed when he addressed the trust’s board of directors last week.

Furthermore, £4.5m has been received by the trust from its fair share of residual resources that the ICB has received, of which all providers in its local system have also received a share.

Mr Bertram said these are

“significant funds that will clearly improve our position.”

In September, the hospital trust’s deficit stood at £11.8m.

It had been heading for a £40m deficit without action, with industrial action, agency spending, and more tariffs on drugs and devices.

The trust was forced to postpone several operations and appointments throughout strike action in September and October.

The trust’s agency spend is capped at 3.7 per cent of its overall pay spend, but at the end of October expenditure on agency staffing was £3.7m ahead of the cap.

Mr Bertram said he has been asking departments within the trust where money has been wasted in an attempt to bring the deficit down as efficiently as possible.