Birmingham hospital budgets are more than £27 million in the red
It's being blamed on soaring wage bills and strike action
Soaring wage bills and strike action has left Birmingham hospital budgets more than £27 million in the red.
A meeting of the University Hospitals Birmingham (UHB) NHS Foundation Trust board was told they will need to ‘better manage’ it’s workforce plan to control its salary expenditure.
Figures presented to the board said that, as of February (Month 11), the deficit was recorded at £27.2 million – more than £21 million where they expected to be at this stage of the financial year.
The latest budget plans for the trust to finish with a year end deficit of £4.2 million.
Bosses were told that industrial action taken by resident (junior) doctors has so far cost them around £6 million while an extra £2 million was spent on bank staff.
The trust has so far this year made around £108 million in budget cuts as a result of its Cost Improvement Programme (CIP), although this is still around £8 million less than planned at this stage.
Julian Miller, chief financial officer, said: “The trust plan for the year was a deficit of £4.2 million.
“As at Month 11, the deficit is reported at £27.2 million. So, £21.3 million adverse to the planned deficit at this stage.
“That is largely driven by overspend against pay budgets. A combination of the costs of industrial action, over £6 million there, slippage on CIP delivery, particularly in relation to the plans that were in place at the start of the year to make some big reductions in bank pay not being fully delivered.
“There is a £2 million slippage on bank pay which has contributed to the overspend.
“There are some other smaller issues around operational pressures, incremental drift and things like that have contributed to a significant overspend on pay.
“Next year, there is a need to better manage the workforce plan to get control of that. It is a real area of focus.”
He added: “We have delivered nearly £108 million of savings in the first 11 months of 2025/26 which is a fantastic achievement albeit about £8.1 million behind what we planned to do year to date.
“We expect out turn of about £120 million worth of savings of which something like 70 per cent will be recurrent.”