Health trust makes £5.8m savings

Trust bosses need to lower their deficit to £35m by April

Health bosses at a cash-strapped NHS trust claim to have slashed costs by £5.8m in just one month.

That is more than half of the £10m savings targeted by the North Yorkshire and York Primary Care Trust (PCT) when it was formed by a merger in October.

The new PCT said then it needed to cut its £45m deficit to £35m by April.

Officials said most of the savings made in February were because managers had previously overestimated how many jobs would need to be cut during the merger.

Several projects had also been put back to the following financial year.

'Awful fear'

The organisation has said services still need to be cut to help it balance its books, but critics have warned that could put lives at risk.

In January, the Local Medical Committee - an independent body which represents GPs - wrote to the trust criticising its plans to change how people are referred to hospital.

Instead of GPs sending people directly to specialists, some cases would need outside approval before money for treatment would be released.

John Blackie, chair of the health scrutiny committee at North Yorkshire County Council, said that because the savings were of a technical nature they would not have a detrimental impact on health care.

However, he said he had an "awful fear" there would be major cutbacks on healthcare provision in the future as the trust struggled to get back into the black.