Health board set to end the financial year £5 million worse off than predicted

Elgan Hearn, local democracy reporter

A health board is projected to finish the financial year with a £33.3 million deficit – £5 million more than expected, which would take its underlying deficit to £44.67 million.

At a Powys Teaching Health Board (PTHB) meeting last week, members were given an update on how the PTHB budget had performed so far and how it stood at the end of month nine of the 2025/2026 financial year.

Finance director Pete Hopgood said that PTHB is reporting a £24.991 million deficit, which is £3.75 million more than the predicted £21.23 million deficit.

This is calculated on the £28.3 million planned deficit being divided by 12 and this sum then multiplied by nine.

Mr Hopgood said: “The forecast variance against the plan is £5 million to the end of the year.

“The health board has been unable to find further mitigating actions against these cost pressures, so as a result we are revising our forecast from a £28.3 million deficit to a £33.3 million deficit.”

“You will note that the key overspends are in relation to the health care services provided by other bodies.”

This includes a £2.8 million overspend with NHS England due to tariff increases for treatment in hospitals over the border.

Mr Hopgood did highlight some areas of success.

Mr Hopgood said: “It is pleasing to note that agency (nursing staff) and locum (doctors) spend are lower than they have been for four years including this year.”

The report showed that the cost for these types of temporary workers was £238,000 less than at the same point last year.

He added that the health board had identified and delivered £20 million in “improvements” already this year.

Mr Hopgood said: “That is a significant achievement for the health board and a higher figure than we’ve been able to deliver in a considerable amount of time.

“There is more we need to do to reduce our financial spend.”

Independent board member, Steve Elliott said: “It’s disappointing that we haven’t been able to deliver the plan we set ourselves earlier in the year, the reasons for that are clear and mostly outside our control.

“An incredible amount of savings have been achieved this year.”

He asked whether the Welsh Government would be providing “strategic cash” to support the health board.

Mr Hopgood said: “We’ve have had no response on that point.”

‘Re-configuration’

Independent board member Mick Giannasi said: “This draws me to the conclusion that substantive solutions sit in long-term transformation and service re-configuration.”

He believed it was important to set this position out in the “public domain.”

The board went ahead and noted the report.