THE body taking over the running of health provision across north London has just six days to plug a £16m budget shortfall, it was revealed today.

The North Central London Health Trust (NCLHT) presented a report to a committee of councillors from five boroughs showing how tight the budget would be this year because of inflation and loss of funds.

The Trust will take over the running of health commissioning on April 1 across Barnet, Enfield, Haringey, Camden and Islington, as plans to hand the powers to GP commissioning groups are put into place.

However, today a joint overview board of councillors heard the Trust needs “£16m worth of support to break even” for this year’s accounts, because of existing debt between Enfield, Barnet and Haringey PCTs.

Figures shown to the committee shoed the five trust’s combined finances had an £81m deficit this year, which would go up to £153m next year because of factors including inflation.

However, the majority of this would be mitigated by plans to streamline services and wring more from them, known as the Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention (QIPP) plan.

But these measures, which include asking GPs to provide more of the basic services they are contracted to do, also has a £25m budget gap, which are called “unidentified savings”.

When asked if the Trust could cover the budget gap in the six days Richard Quinton, the interim director of finance, said he “did not know” when they had to come up with an answer to the problem.

He added the projections were based on expected outcomes of negotiations with hospital and mental health trusts for payments for their services, which could be higher than predicted.