The NHS deficit in England rose to nearly £2.3bn in the first nine months of the financial year, official figures have confirmed.

Following a sharp rise on the £1.6bn reported by trusts after six months, regulators insisted efforts to get a grip on rising costs were beginning to have an impact. They added, however, that pressures created by rising demands for care, high costs and problems with being able to discharge medically fit patients to suitable care outside hospital remained.

The figures, covering the nine months from April 2015, also confirm the impression given by separate documents released on Thursday in response to freedom of information requests, which suggest trusts are having difficulty meeting caps on agency staff.



The deficit of £2.26bn – revealed on Friday by Monitor and the NHS Trust Development Authority, which oversee foundation trusts and non-foundation trusts respectively – is strikingly similar to the £2.3bn estimated for the whole financial year by the respected King’s Fund thinktank this week, another indication of the task facing trusts.

The Department of Health put a brave face on the figures. It recognised that finances were “challenging”, but insisted the government was committed to the NHS and was investing £10bn to fund its own plan for reshaping services in the future.

But Heidi Alexander, Labour’s shadow health secretary, said the NHS was “now in financial freefall”. She added that ministers must be honest about what the figures meant for patient care – for example, staff cuts, longer waits for treatment and services at risk of closure.

The official figures show:



The overall deficit for service providers is £622m worse than planned.

Three-quarters of providers are running deficits.

The £2.72bn spent on agency and contract staff is £1bn more than planned.

The £1.94bn of service savings is £257m less than planned.

Providers hope to cut another £450m by the end of March.

3.14 million people are on the waiting list for routine operations.

John Appleby – the King’s Fund chief economist whose report on Thursday highlighted the problems and who had already indicated that shortfalls would exceed the thinktank’s end-of-year predictions – said there was evidence that many trusts would not be able to deliver the cuts needed to get the overall deficit down to £1.8bn by the end of March.

“This has significant implications,” Appleby said. “Any shortfall will come out of next year’s budget, eating into the extra funding provided in the [government’s] spending review and leaving even less money for essential changes to services.

“If an end-of-year deficit approaches the worst-case scenario laid out in these figures – £2.8bn – it is hard to see how the Department of Health will avoid overspending its budget for the year, something that has never happened before.”

Paul Briddock, the policy director for professional body the Healthcare Financial Management Association, said: “The writing’s on the wall – the deficit has already far exceeded what was originally forecast. It’s also disappointing to see many key performance targets are not hitting the mark, including waiting times for A&E, referral to treatment and 62-day cancer waits.”

Paul Healy, a senior policy adviser at the NHS Confederation, which includes service providers, said: “The last 24 months have established a creeping decline in the stability of providers in the NHS and the figures published today do not indicate a significant shift in this trend.

“Many factors contributing to this decline are beyond the means of individual organisations and we should be wary of increasing the regulatory pressure on individual trusts’ leaders. Instead, most problems will be better solved working hard as an entire health and care system to reshape how services are delivered.”