£80m deficit: Nottingham hospital trust to reach only two-thirds of ambitious £100m savings target

The projected financial state of Nottingham University Hospitals Trust (NUH) by the end of March 2026 was presented to trust executives in a board meeting on March 12.

NUH, which runs Queen’s Medical Centre and City Hospital, is looking at an £80.6m deficit in its budget by the end of the 2025-26 financial year. The trust was working towards a break-even plan by then.

This multi-million pound budget hole is mostly due to the trust being £66.8m off its financial plan this year – including not hitting its savings target.

The trust had an ‘ambitious’ plan to find savings of £97.7m this financial year but is expecting to only have saved £67.1m of this target – around two thirds – meaning it had a savings shortfall of £30.6m.

Included in its off-plan spending, NUH has experienced £10.4m in ‘cost pressures’, including outside funding not completely covering the trust’s costs, inflation issues and redundancy spends.

A ‘very challenging winter’ this year has meant NUH has also had to spend £6.2m extra on operational costs, largely due to an increased demand in emergency care.

Speaking at the meeting, Paul Matthew, chief financial officer at the trust, said: “We’ve spent about £6.2m more than we planned to spend across managing that with increased capacity mainly driving that through temporary staffing costs.”

Mr Matthew called the trust’s savings plan ‘very ambitious’ but added: “In itself, that £67m saved is a very significant number so we must not be too disheartened by that.”

With the trust having £13.8m of ‘deficit support funding’ also being withheld by NHS England – due to NUH straying from its money goals – this brings its total projected deficit to £80.6m.

NUH had more success in its savings in the 2024-25 financial year, where it saved around £91.4m.

Despite its overall spending and savings challenges, the hospital trust appears to be on a positive trend with its use of agency staff.

Between April 2025 and January 2026, NUH spent £11.9m on agency staff which is nearly £2m lower than the same period in the year before.

The financially-stricken hospital trust has repeatedly asked for extra cash from the Government in recent months, asking for millions in public dividend capital (PDC).

PDC is the primary way for providers facing ‘exceptional financial difficulties’ to receive cash support, according to the Department for Health & Social Care.

NUH was given £26.9m in November 2025 which helped to temporarily alleviate pressure from supplies who had not been paid for a while.

It then asked for a further £41m in December 2025 but was only given £20m.

In January, board papers revealed it had requested another £70m of support for the remaining quarter of 2025-26.