Savings of £350m mean there will be "some really difficult decisions" warn health chiefs

Blackpool's director of public health Dr Arif Rajpura has warned plans to claw back savings of £350m should not mean the loss of services which keep people healthy and prevent them needing emergency care.

A meeting of the Blackpool Health and Wellbeing Board held at the Town Hall on March 12, heard the NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board (ICB) would have a deficit of £350m at the end of this financial year.

It has been placed into a Segment Four level of oversight, the equivalent of special measures, along with Blackpool Teaching Hospitals whose deficit (part of the overall ICB total) is around £21m, meaning it will receive national support to recover its finances.

The £350m includes £175m of deficit support for the system, meaning the ICB is £180m short of the combined financial plans for the region which has a total annual budget of £5.2bn.

Karen Smith, director of adult social care at Blackpool Council and director of health and care integration at the ICB, told the meeting: "We don't get to save £350m by keeping everything the same as it was and there will be some really difficult decisions.

"There will be impacts, but we don't know what they will be until we get into the detail. It might mean some services rolled out elsewhere won't come here yet, and some services could have their funding reduced or cancelled.

"But on a more positive note, it will drive an intention to work differently and there will also be opportunities from that."

She added Blackpool's population faced many health challenges and "we need to be confident that is taken into account in terms of decisions around resources."

Dr Rajpura said while acute care could take up a lot of money, investment still needed to be made in preventative services.

He said: "We need to invest in primary and social care, and if we do all of those things, the acute sector will be resolved."

Catherine McDonald, deputy chief executive of Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, said savings could be made by looking at staffing costs.

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This could include reducing the amount spent on agency staff, scrutinising non-clinical posts and use of the Mutually Agreed Resignation Scheme.

But she reassured the board any action taken as part of the recovery programme would need to still maintain the same quality and safety of services.