NHS Highland funding and budgets

The Scottish Government budget announcement in December 2023 presents challenges across the public sector.

The pressures of inflation, increasing need for services, pay, and other factors such as energy costs, are not matched by the funding provided.

Our planned forecast deficit for 2024-25 is £112.5 million: approximately 14% of our core allocation. Any deficit must be filled by brokerage (borrowing) from Scottish Government. Brokerage must be repaid, and has been capped at £28.4m for the year, leaving a £84.091m (circa 10%) reduction in spend needed. We need to take urgent action to meet this gap.

NHS Highland has provided Scottish Government with a financial plan that highlights the actions that would need to be taken to deliver this £84.091m through a combination of cost improvements and reductions.

We are developing our workstreams as part of our 3% efficiency improvements, which are a part of our ongoing cost improvement plans delivered year on year, under the headings of:

• whole system workstreams
• operational workstreams
• corporate workstreams
• digital workstreams

We will share more about these as they develop.

The remainder of the reductions will be made through a mixture of actions that will support the longer term sustainability of our services and the potential for service reductions which will require difficult decisions by both the Health Board and Scottish Government.