Warnings as East Lancs Hospitals Trust overspends by £26m and looks to make crucial savings

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Warnings come as patients at Royal Blackburn's A&E wait 15-hours - triggering a 'red alert'

The boss of East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust has warned it is running a £26million overspend and needs to take steps to 'reduce costs with immediate effect'.

In a letter sent to all members of staff, Chief Executive Martin Hodgson outlined a series of savings including a freeze on recruitment.

He said the trust was treating the cash crisis as "a major incident similar to our response to Covid" and said a priority was to "focus on discharges" to reduce bed occupancy.

Chief Executive Martin Hodgson has written a letter to all staff outlining a series of savings including a freeze on recruitment

A range of further measures include ensuring everything it does is appropriately and effectively coded and charged, an end to all non-essential spending and considering scrapping the shuttle bus which takes patients between the Royal Blackburn and Burnley General Hospitals

His letter says that at the end of October ELHT was overspending by £26m and 'we are not seeing any reduction'.

Mr Hodgson's comments come after the the trust revealed 15-hour waits for patients at the Royal Blackburn's accident and emergency department triggering a 'red alert'.

Steps include a freeze on recruitment and possible plans to scrap the shuttle bus between Royal Blackburn and Burnley General Hospitals.

A statement from Blackburn and District Trades Union Council said: "The 'overspend' at the trust appears to be a good example of how 'efficiency savings' are really a sleight of hand expression for inadequate funding – you give with one hand and then take away with the other.

"It is difficult to know at the best of times how to calculate the 'ideal' allocation for a service, but the situation gets even worse when what is allocated is chipped away at by other measures.

"Other than the 'go slow' on vacancy filling, it is very difficult to pin down what the trust’s 'expenditure reductions' will actually amount to – except that the shuttle bus has clearly been put in the firing line again.

"It seems to be a classic case of bosses picking on something they don’t really understand the value of because they have never really understood how helpful it is."

Blackburn MP Adnan Hussain, who met trust bosses on Friday, said it was a "huge area of concern".

He said: "The issues surrounding the hospital are at the forefront of my concerns and I will explore all possible options, with the government, in order to bring about the best outcomes for the hospital."