This is Part 1 of the latest Lowdown overview of the financial state of the NHS, drawing on ICB and trust board papers and other sources. Most of the work was done in the second half of October.
Since this draft was completed, the Health Service Journal has published a hard-hitting interview with Hardev Virdee, group finance officer of Barts Health Trust, junior vice president of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, and the chair of the NHS National Finance Academy.
He warns that NHS England’s “main goal” is “to produce financial plans that were acceptable to the government, rather than being sustainable or credible.
As a result, serious financial planning has become almost impossible for ICBs and Trusts where “the outcome of a plan doesn’t suit what the Treasury and Department of Health are looking for,” and finance directors are obliged to present “unrealistic” cost improvement programmes to boards in order to secure agreement from NHS England.
Full article in The Lowdown, 5 November 2024