Trust’s £8m government bailout

nlillitos@thekmgroup.co.uk

Sir John Stanley, MP for Tonbridge and Malling, says the trust has been rendered “effectively insolvent” by the private finance contract entered into several years ago to build the Tunbridge Wells Hospital at Pembury.

Within hours of this claim, the trust denied it was broke, but it only made a tiny surplus of £129,000 in 2012-13 out of a total budget of £367 million.

This was after receiving the short-term bail-out of £8m last year. It is the first time the trust has publicly conceded it had received such a payment.

The trust’s finance director John Headley said: “We are not insolvent.”

He added that current talks with government will later confirm if this one-off payment, from last year, will occur on a current basis.”

Last year health minister Jeremy Hunt indicated his decision on financially rescuing our hos- pitals could be expected by the end of last March.

However his department is now saying their deliberations are “expected to conclude by the end of June.”

A contract with private sector operator Laing O’Rourke financed the £228m hospital in Pembury. That has landed the trust with having to find £1.7 m a month in repayments. The company will eventually pocket £612m of taxpayers’ money over the 30-year contract.

Sir John Stanley told the KM this week: “I am continuing my campaign to get the Secretary of State for Health to decide whether or not he is going to bail the trust out.”

He said he would be raising the matter in Parliament again by the end of June, if there was still no decision announced.

The trust is among six others shortlisted to receive possible financial help from government.