Nottingham hospitals request £16m emergency funding amid financial pressure
NUH says their financial position remains ‘extremely challenging’ as the trust falls £17.7m behind its savings plan and faces continued pressure on its hospitals
Nottingham’s hospital trust has requested £16 million in emergency funding to ensure it can continue to effectively care for patients.
Nottingham University Hospitals Trust (NUH) board members gathered on Thursday (September 10) to discuss the most recent data on the trust’s operational and financial performance this year.
In recent years, NUH, which runs Nottingham City Hospital and Queen’s Medical Centre, has been heavily reliant on extra funding from the government to help its operations and system work as effectively as possible.
The trust’s finance official said the £16 million in cash support would help with the trust’s expenditure, including on staffing and suppliers, adding it did not relate directly to a specific service within NUH.
The NUH board said they were waiting on a response from NHS England for the first cash request of £16 million in 2026/27.
In the 2025/26 financial year, NUH received £124.9 million in cash support from NHS England, with auditors KPMG stating in its most recent report that NUH’s cash position “continues to be extremely challenging”.
Ahead of the board meeting, the auditors raised concerns over the trust’s drastic cost-cutting plans – including reducing its workforce by six percent, 1,279 work time equivalent (WTE) roles.
The auditors highlighted that NUH was already more than £17 million off budget by July under the savings plan.
The trust reported a £1.9 million deficit that month, which was £3.9 million off its plan, increasing its overall deficit to £34.6 million – £17.7 million off plan.
Delivery of NUH’s savings scheme was behind plan at £6.3 million versus a £7.1 million target, KPMG explained, with the auditors raising concerns over whether the trust could achieve the planned spending cuts.
Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, Paul Matthew, the trust’s chief financial officer, said the trust was expecting to request more cash support during 2026/27.
He said: “The level off-plan then drives our cash need, because clearly we’re spending more than we planned to spend. There’s just a bit of a lag then in between incurring that and then needing the cash to support it.
“Where we end up is a direct consequence of how much cash support we need to then ask for.
“The £17.7 million, month four, adverse off-plan, is the aggregate position of the trust, where we’ve spent more than we said we would. So this cash request is then the cash to support the expenditure that goes with that, be it staffing, suppliers – it doesn’t directly relate to a specific service.”
Scepticism around the trust’s goal to ‘eliminate’ corridor care this year was also expressed by board members at Thursday’s meeting.
NUH is currently working on its ‘Corridor Care Elimination Programme’, which aims to end corridor care in its emergency department by the end of September and across wards by October.
Andrew Hall, chief operating officer, said the number of patients receiving care in a bed in its hospitals’ corridors had “increased significantly” in the last few weeks of August and the first week of September.
This was following a “significantly challenging” period in August, the five heatwaves over the summer causing about a five percent rise in ambulance conveyances and emergency admissions and increased sickness and vacancies over the summer holidays.
NUH’s most recent figure confirm that there were 16 patients on the corridor in the emergency department on Wednesday evening (September 9).
Mr Hall also said bed occupancy has been “significantly higher than anticipated”, with around 20 to 30 more patients at any given time waiting to be discharged for home care in the county area – the equivalent of a ward of patients.
Upon hearing the figures, Professor Sunita Toor, non-executive director, asked: “Is this elimination of corridor care plan still credible?”
Mr Hall replied he believed it was “still achievable” to bring the corridor care number in the emergency department down to zero by the end of September.
He said: “We will remove all patients waiting on emergency department corridors, that’s not all patients waiting in escalation spaces in accordance with the national definition, but it will be all use of our corridors, those patients on trolleys in corridors in the emergency department – I believe that’s still achievable.”
Interim chair Karen Tomlinson criticised the trust’s position on its corridor care goals still being positive.
She said: “You’ve described the overall direction and travel remaining positive – I don’t think it is. I think from the questions that have been asked from the board today, we don’t think it is, that’s the collective.”
Ms Tomlinson said NUH cannot fill ‘other organisation’s gaps’, when external care service deliveries have an impact on NUH’s service.
She said: “I think what I’m hearing is we can’t keep having soft conversations, chats, discussions. I think we have to be very firm as an organisation going forward that we are not the point of resource for everybody in the system around us.
“We cannot continue to have that front door as open as it has been without other organisations taking account and responsibility, so we have to drive this quite hard and quite tough.
“Because if people externally are delivering less of a service and that is having a consequence on us, that is unacceptable, so those partnership conversations are going to be very important.”
NUH is planning to reduce its 20,000-strong workforce by 1,279 work time equivalent (WTE) roles, a measurement that counts the number of full-time employees based on total hours worked.
The trust launched a Voluntary Redundancy (VR) scheme to cut its administrative and clerical workers by around 130 roles in July.
Speaking after the meeting, Mr Matthew said: “We remain in a challenged financial position, but are absolutely committed to our financial and transformation plans alongside maintaining patient safety, and are working hard to meet our target for the year.
“We recognise our current position, which is in part impacted by higher demand than predicted through the summer months. Subsequently in September we have asked NHSE England for additional cash funds for the first time this financial year.
“This year we aim to address our financial savings of £106m through a transformation programme that will help us to improve how we work, reduce variation, make better use of our resources and invest in changes that will improve care and patient flow.
“While this comes with its challenges and risks, in particular during times of significant pressure like we have seen this summer and into winter, we remain completely committed to not only making those savings, but our long-term aim of improving our services and providing better value for money for taxpayers.
“Work has already started to double the size of our Same Day Emergency Care Unit, we are reducing patient length of stay and are introducing a General Internal Medicine model to improve flow and patient experience in our hospitals.
“We are also working to further reduce our use of agency and bank staff and have launched targeted Voluntary Redundancy and Mutually Agreed Resignation schemes where we are making changes to the ways we work, offering colleagues as much choice as possible and minimising compulsory redundancies.”