A hospital boss has promised to put patients first, despite needing to cut £67m in expenditure.

Mark Hackett, the chief executive of Derriford Hospital, run by Plymouth University Hospitals NHS (UHP) Trust, said the six per cent cutback would not lead to compromising patient care, despite being the biggest ongoing annual savings ever required.

Action includes cutting the wage bill by reducing reliance on expensive agency (bank) staff and becoming more productive and efficient.

He said: “It will be a tough year financially as we look to get back into the black. Against the backdrop of global instability and very challenging public finances, the NHS is making some difficult spending decisions for this financial year. Despite NHS investment being protected by the Government over and above other public services, local budgets are still stretched because of rising need for healthcare and increased costs.

“As well as continuing to improve our services for patients, this means that at UHP, we also have a challenge to save £67 million per year which is equivalent to about six per cent of our total £1 billion expenditure. We are working on a savings plan to achieve this.

“To do this, we need to increase productivity, in other words what we do, and reduce our pay bill. £67 million is, as it sounds, a significant amount and although we did deliver a large savings target last year (£56 million), we have never made a saving of this magnitude before on a recurrent basis.

“Much of our funding goes on pay for our 11,000 staff plus pay to bank and agency staff. Overall, we will have to reduce our total spend on pay by about £34m per year from 1 April 2025.

“We will look, as far as possible, to make the pay savings through a combination of turnover and vacancies, reducing our discretionary pay spend which includes things like overtime and bank pay and better managing sickness absence.”

He stressed that operating within a reduced budget would still mean the trust prioritising resources directly to patient care services and as well as reducing the running costs of non-patient care facing services.

“We will always seek to act around the best interests of patient and staff true to our values, valuing everyone in our organisation for their contribution.

“We know that by becoming more clinically efficient, for example, not admitting patients and using more specialist clinics to prioritise patients with urgent need where clinically appropriate. This enables patients to have a better experience, and we reduce costs.

“There is more to do to improve urgent and emergency, cancer and elective care. We will be working with partners inside and outside the trust, including our trade unions.”

In the past year, Derriford has opened a new medical receiving unit, orthopaedic suite and expanded same-day emergency care.

New-build opening plans in the next 12 months include an urgent treatment centre, a community diagnostic centre in Plymouth city centre and starting the £200 million new hospital emergency care building. The trust will also implement an electronic patient records scheme to improve interdepartmental sharing of medical notes.