HYWEL Dda Health Board must become “more efficient” to address its financial problems as part of the board’s ‘turnaround’ plan to get on a solid financial level, the board has warned.

The board has drawn up a ‘turnaround’ plan aimed at finding a way to reduce the board’s spending and balance its budget after massive overspending in recent years - with board members warning that spending on agency and locum staff was a major problem.

The plan warns that the board must find savings of £32m and that a cut in spending must be found to ensure that changes to make services stronger can take place.

It says: “Our plans for turnaround represent an approach to sharpening our focus on financial delivery whilst ensuring we keep a tight grip on the performance of daily operations.

“We know the scale of the challenge facing us - we have an increased savings target of £32m and our expenditure must fall from £810.9m to £809.4m. Our cost pressures and the need to re-provide for non-recurrent solutions are jointly driving the need to make significant savings.

“We intend to put ourselves into a proactive and voluntary turnaround, which will be managed in-house in order to use the skills and expertise of the people closest to our services, who can see and understand all of the ‘moving parts’ which need to work together to ensure a sustainable long-term solution.

“This is not just a money-saving measure, but is a necessary step towards transformation; if we succeed in our objective we will give ourselves both the financial wherewithal and the right mandate to continue to plans to transform clinical services."

See this week’s south editions for the full story, in shops and online now