Trust's deeper financial plight to £17million deficit

Leaked emails, seen by The Scarborough News, sent by chief executive Patrick Crowley, confirmed York Teaching Hospital NHS Trust had a £10.5 million shortfall against plan and a deficit of £13.8 million after month four and it will have to borrow money to make sure it can operate.

Since then, the trust has gone into further financial trouble and in the past three months has registered an additional £3.2million deficit.

The trust did not confirm whether there would be ward closures or job losses as a result but said it has “some difficult decisions” to make in the coming months.

A spokesman for York Trust said: “The Trust has prepared a financial recovery plan which includes a series of expenditure and income control improvement measures.

“We are in the process of making a working capital loan application. This is termed the distressed cash regime.

“The Trust has not yet entered into an agreement and discussions are continuing with our regulator over the details of the working capital loan. Interest charges have not yet been confirmed and are part of these discussions.”

Mr Crowley told staff in an email in August: “Our cash flow modelling is predicting that we will exhaust our cash reserves by October 2017. For the first time in the Trust’s long history we will run out of cash and will have to enter the Foundation Trust Distressed Cash regime.

“This means we will be taking out a loan for working capital, the terms of which require interest payments and eventual loan repayment.

“This is not a straightforward process and will place the Trust under significantly enhanced financial scrutiny by our regulators and will start to see the removal of investment choices that you all know I have personally strived to maintain through my time as chief executive.”