FINANCE chiefs at Burnley Health Trust have ordered department heads to control their spending and claw back a six-figure overspend, it was revealed today.

The managers of individual directorates have been told to draw up urgent plans after budgets were exceeded by more than £240,000 in the first two months of the financial year.

They have been given until Thursday to put together recovery plans to try and balance the books.

In a report to tomorrow's Burnley Health Trust board meeting finance director David Meakin says: "The trust has had a very difficult start to the financial year with significant overspending in four directorates.

"It is imperative that these budgets are brought back into balance in order that we can move ahead with our business plan, to that end directorates have been requested to produce recovery plans by July 1.

"It is disappointing that having had a significant injection of funds from East Lancashire, I have to report that the trust directorate budgets are overspent. "The trust had intended to develop a number of services out of the business plan, however, in light of this adverse financial position in month two, the start of these developments will have to be deferred." The report says service agreements are overspent by £12,900 with directorate budgets overspent by £229,700.

It has been caused by higher costs for agency nursing and consumable expenditure in theatres; locum medical staff and agency nursing in orthopaedics; bank nursing in accident and emergency and high dependency unit (HDU) staffing in surgery.

Mr Meakin's report says solutions are being sought to all the expenditure problems, one of which was a one-off cost and another was as a result of winter funding ceasing.

Overspending in medical specialities was due to drug expenditure and bank nursing.

Mental health services overspent as a result of not being able to secure service agreements to sustain the eating disorder service and in diagnostics, pathology overspent on agency staffing and consumables and because some MRI scan contracts were 'carried over' into the new financial year.

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