West Suffolk Hospital’s trust says it understands actions to slash costs ‘will feel incredibly difficult’, as cuts include free gym membership

Bosses of a cash-strapped hospital trust have said they understand the ‘significant impact’ it is having on staff as they try and reduce its deficit of millions.

West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, which runs West Suffolk Hospital in Bury St Edmunds and Newmarket Community Hospital, has a £14 million deficit for the year to date, which is £5 million worse than planned. The trust needs to save about £38 million over the next three years.

In its efforts to fix its financial position, WSFT has brought in measures including slowing recruitment and reducing spending on temporary and agency staff. It is also closing its award-winning clinical helpline and scaling back psychological support for staff.

And this week, staff were told their free Abbeycroft Leisure membership is ending.

In an update to staff, Dr Ewen Cameron, chief executive of WSFT, said he wanted to reassure staff they do understand that the actions they are taking are having a ‘really significant impact’ on them.

He said: “If only it was possible for us to turn around the financial problems in the organisation that have built up over many years without it having an impact, that would be marvellous.

“The scale is such that it will be painful and very difficult for all in the organisation and it’s also, as we’ve said before, this is not solvable in one year. It will take us a few years to get on top of this.

“Also it’s really important for us to acknowledge that the scale of our deficit is not only having an impact on us within the organisation, but on other parts of the whole system. Funding is being diverted from other parts of the system to cover our deficit.”

He added: “The fact that we do need to do this does not take away from the fact that it will feel incredibly difficult for people and we are highly aware of that and we will do everything we can to minimise the impact, but it’s not possible to resolve this without having an impact.”

Jonathan Rowell, who has been brought in as executive director of financial recovery, and is WSFT’s acting chief financial officer, said: “We are perilously close to our annual deficit after five months, which is clearly the driving force and the fact behind needing to recover that situation.

“We cannot allow that situation to continue.”

He said a big driver of the deficit was around pay overspending, particularly around temporary staff, and also said another big factor was that the trust hadn’t achieved the level of savings it said it would at the start of the year.

He added: “Getting to a £15.2 million deficit [year-end forecast] is going to be extremely challenging.”

However, Mr Rowell said within the month five position, there were ‘signs of the tiniest green shoots’.

He said there was some evidence the Cost Improvement Plan was £400,000 better than the previous month, and also some evidence that the temporary spend is starting to drop off.

Speaking about the Abbeycroft Leisure offer coming to an end, Jeremy Over, executive director of workforce and communications, said the trust no longer received funding for it.

He said: “We know it’s been a really highly-valued and used offer and that’s been a really positive thing to have done for teams across the organisation over the last four years, but it is sadly something that will come to an end.”

Existing members will have access to their ‘free to use’ membership until their membership contract ends and then, to ease the transition, from April 2025 there will be a new, reduced membership offer of £25 a month.

In a comment to SuffolkNews, Mr Over said: “With our financial challenges ongoing, we are having to take difficult decisions about where we channel our limited resources.

“Whilst staff health and wellbeing are still important priorities for the organisation, with no dedicated funding for the ‘free to use’ staff Abbeycroft gym membership, we are unable to keep this offer going.

“Abbeycroft Leisure has been fantastic in agreeing to support staff with a subsidised gym membership rate once the ‘free to use’ membership comes to an end next year. We are very grateful for our on-going partnership with them.”