A FUNDING injection of nearly £13 million should see Wye Valley NHS Trust (WVT) through to the end of the financial year.

But the Trust board was today warned that the cash came with the “clear and real” expectation of achieving break even.

The NHS Trust Development Authority (TDA) has channelled a one-off £12.7 million to cash-strapped WVT which, six weeks into measures, is dependent on outside funding to cut its operating deficit.

Today, the board was told that, at the end of month 7, the trust’s reported deficit was £6.295 million or £1,892 million behind a financial plan that projected a £9 million deficit.

This position, the board heard,  reflected the continuing “significant”  pressures  on urgent care and the effect of those pressures across all areas of the trust’s work.

With TDA cash coming, the trust can forecast break even by the end of the financial year.

But WVT finance director Howard Oddy told the board that the TDA’s expectation of break even, at best, was “clear and real”.

The cash position of the trust is dependent on receiving the external funding needed to support both capital spending and the revenue deficit.

Initially, this funding was to be received as Public Dividend Capital (PDC), a form of long-term government finance which was provided to NHS trusts when they were first formed to enable them to purchase  assets from the Secretary of State.

PDC represents the Department of Health’s equity interest in defined public assets across the NHS.

The current cash position has required the trust to draw down temporary borrowing in July, September and October.

A  request for further funding was submitted this month.

The trust originally planned to repay temporary borrowings  on receiving its PDC funding.

Now, the borrowing is anticipated to be repaid once the TDA funding is in place.

The trust has an arrangement with the GP led Herefordshire Clinical Commissioning Group  - which buys and shapes the county’s health services -  to advance income for trust services on a quarterly basis – repayable over the following two months – to assist with cash-flow requirements relating to the trust’s quarterly PFI contractual payments.

In January, the trust, facing a £15 million deficit without financial support, secured £9m from the TDA to forecast a break even position by the end of the 2013-14 financial year.

The trust has required increasing levels of support over recent years just to break even with another £9.8m needed over 2012-13.

Then, the trust was declared as in “turnaround” to emphasise the urgency and scale of the financial challenges it faced.