The consequences of living within your means

The consequences of living within your means The technicality (or ‘administrative error’ as the National Audit Office described it) that enabled the Department of Health to avoid breaching expenditure controls set by parliament may have spared it from the full wrath of the National Audit Office, MPs and the Public Accounts Committee; but it did little to hide the bottom line – a serious financial crisis engulfing the NHS.

In 2015/16, NHS providers overspent by an eye-watering £2.8 billion (reduced to £2.5 billion by one-off measures). Although a commissioning underspend of £700 million helped to offset this figure, the NHS (commissioners and providers in aggregate) still ended 2015/16 with the largest deficit in its history. The King's Fund