NHS bosses in Birmingham ‘need to be spending less’ to try and balance the books
NHS bosses in Birmingham and Solihull said they ‘need to be spending less’ as they look to balance the books this year.
Members of the Birmingham and Solihull Integrated Care Board (ICB) were told that, as of month four of the 2025/26 financial year, the system has a deficit of £31.4 million – a £17.8 million shortfall against its original plan.
But the ICB said, whilst the figures were ‘not good’, planned efficiencies to tackle the deficit were starting to take effect while the month-by-month run rate was positive.
At the start of the year, the ICB was set the challenge of making more than £330 million worth of cuts to spending in the current year – £100 million more than it faced in 2024/25.
A report to the board said pay was a significant factor to the current deficit – with it being £17.2 million worse than planned at this stage of the year.
Paul Taylor, non-executive director for finance and performance, said: “We’ve got a bigger challenge this year in order to get down to ‘break even’. But our run rate month by month expenditure is very steady.
“We’ve got a commitment from all of our providers to meet the cost improvement programme.
“No one should be under any illusion that this is not a really difficult thing to do but there is a great will there to try and get it done.
“Our numbers do look bad in terms of where we would want them to be but there is a great ambition amongst everybody to try to claw this back
“Whilst it is promising, we need to be spending a bit less each month.”
Paul Athey, chief finance officer, added: “We saw a £6.1million deficit against plan in month one and two, £3.9m in month three and £1.7 million in month four so we can definitely see some of those efficiencies are beginning to bite.
“We have delivered £90 million worth of efficiencies this year, which is nearly half of last year’s target and efficiency schemes tend to be back-ended towards the second half of the year.”
