Summer's junior doctors strike cost Newcastle's hospitals £1.4m

The now-concluded junior doctors' strikes saw the Newcastle Hospitals NHS Tust spend around £1.4m more than planned this summer.

According to a report submitted to the trust's board this week, the city's hospital trust had an overspend of that amount across April, May, June and July - the first four months of the accounting year. The final episode of junior doctor strike action took place from June 27 to July 2 this year, in the run-up to the General Election.

During that time, the trust had to reschedule 73 elective procedures and 336 outpatient appointments. According to the report, the trust is running a year-to-date financial deficit of £6.6m - a figure around £1.4m higher than had been planned.

In the trust's board report, written ahead of a meeting this Friday in the name of three directors Rob Harrison, Angela O'Brien and Vicky McFarlane-Reid, they write: "As at Month 4 the Trust is reporting an overspend of £1.4 million against the planned deficit of £5.2 million (after Control Total). This variance relates to the additional cost of the Junior Doctors Strike."

Earlier this year it emerged that the city's hospitals were facing serious financial problems - and a potential £80m deficit. In May, managing director Mr Harrison told Newcastle City Council's health scrutiny committee that the trust was around half-way to plugging that deficit.

The financial cost of the industrial action has been cited by Labour politicians as reason for settling the junior doctors pay dispute with a pay offer that will see salaries rise by between 3.71% and 5.05% – averaging 4.05% – on top of an existing pay award for last year. This will be backdated to April 2023.

In July, the Chancellor Rachel Reeves told Times Radio the cost of this would be £350m - but said that was a “drop in the ocean” compared to the £1.7 billion cost of industrial action in the NHS to the economy last year.

She said: "Just last year 1.4 million appointments in the NHS (were) cancelled, that had an economic cost too – £1.7 billion cost to our economy last year of industrial action in the NHS alone.”

Following the most recent strike action, NHS England reported how the cumulative total of rescheduled appointments had almost reached 1.5 million (1,486,258).