HOSPITAL bosses have overspent by more than £400,000 in just one month.

Less than a week after a dossier of more than 200 testimonies of poor care at the Royal Blackburn Hospital was released, directors at East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust admitted they were already facing a deficit of £442,000 from April this year.

As a result directors have demanded that managers of each department explain why they were spending too much.

Extra money has gone to key surgical areas including accident and emergency, anaesthetics, medical wards, and the hospital pharmacy.

Vital income from performing orthopaedic surgery has been lost during repair works on a theatre at Burnley General Hospital, and the trust is also failing to meet its own targets for its cost improvement plan, which aims to cut spending by a minimum of 4% per year.

It had planned to reduce costs by £1.17 million in April, but missed its target by £160,000.

Financial director Stephen Brookfield gave trust members a stark warning at their board meeting yesterday (WED), telling them that theatre budgets would run "out of control" without top-level intervention.

There has been no overall theatre manager at the Trust for more than six months. A candidate who was chosen last year decided not to take up the post, but a new manager will now arrive in August.

Urgent action is needed before then, and director of operations Val Bertenshaw is working with Mr Brookfield to tighten budgets, as well as holding regular meetings with department managers.

Keeping to budget plans is key to the hospital achieving foundation status, which would give the hospital more freedom to manage its accounts.

Mr Brookfield said: "These budgets were agreed with board members and department managers, but they have not been implemented. We have set out action plans for the areas of variance from plan, and the new chief executive will pick this up as a live issue."

Non-executive directors George Boyer and Paul Hinnigan said staff should be expected to keep to budgets without relying on directors. Mr Boyer said: "A month ago, we were told this would be delivered. I now actually have a loss of faith in the plans for the rest of the year. I need to see that faith restored."

Acting chief executive Gary Graham paid tribute to staff's hard work during the closure of Burnley's Accident and Emergency and movement of other services during the first phase of the Meeting Patients' Needs programme, and said strong measures had to be countered with encouragement and support.

But Unison representative Peter Dales said pressurised workers would find keeping to continued budget cuts "very difficult".