St George’s Hospital is running up £700,000-a-day losses, and admitted last week it can’t produce a financial plan that will gain approval of NHS regulators.
At a Wandsworth council health committee meeting, the Trust disclosed a projected deficit of £87.9 million for the coming year. With inflation and other rising costs, the gap reaches £108.8 million.
The Trust must find £90.6 million in savings to break even. Even then, £18.2 million remains unaccounted for.
St George’s is the hospital Putney residents use for emergency care, cancer treatment, surgery, and maternity. It is already rated “requires improvement” by the NHS regulator in four separate areas.
A coroner warned in January that A&E staff still face “impossible situations” where demand exceeds what they can safely manage. The Trust says changes since the two deaths in 2024 have cut falls in the department by 30%, but a formal report required a response to the Health Secretary by February, which St George’s has not publicly confirmed.
Asked directly: can you do this without harming patients?
Cllr George Crivelli, the committee’s opposition health spokesman, asked managing director Kate Slemeck directly: could she guarantee the savings programme wouldn’t affect services or patient care?
Slemeck did not offer a guarantee. “That’s an incredibly challenging savings target, and it has been incredibly challenging,” she said. Every proposed saving goes through clinical quality checks overseen by the Trust’s medical and nursing directors. But the process has already produced visible consequences: four operating theatres at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Roehampton have closed, as Putney.news reported last September.
The Trust is in talks with NHS England to close the remaining £18.2 million gap. It did not say what those talks might mean for services.
What the CQC found
The financial pressure sits on top of a difficult picture from the Care Quality Commission.
Surgery dropped from “good” to “requires improvement” after last winter’s inspection. Maternity climbed from “inadequate” to “requires improvement”, progress, but not yet a clean bill of health. A&E and emergency care has remained at “requires improvement.” Leadership was rated “requires improvement” following a CQC inspection in February 2025; inspectors found that staff were contacting them anonymously because they did not feel safe raising concerns openly.
Only 73.5% of patients needing urgent cancer treatment started it within 62 days in December, against an NHS target of 85%. The shortfall is partly caused by limited specialist theatre capacity for thoracic cancer cases, forcing the Trust to send patients to other London hospitals each week.
The Trust is currently seeing 60% of patients within 18 weeks, against a government target of 65% by the end of this month. Slemeck said she expects to reach that figure within 12 months.
What happens next
The new financial year starts on 1 April. The committee noted the report and requested no further action. Its next meeting is 17 June, after May’s local elections, which may bring an entirely different committee membership.
What you can do
If you have a concern about care at St George’s or Queen Mary’s Hospital, contact the Patient Advice and Liaison Service: pals@stgeorges.nhs.uk or 020 8725 2453, Monday to Friday.
Healthwatch Wandsworth collects residents’ experiences of NHS services and escalates concerns to decision-makers: information@healthwatchwandsworth.co.uk
The Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee scrutinises St George’s in public. Its next meeting is 17 June 2026 at 7.30pm. To attend or submit a deputation, contact committee secretary Laura Campbell: laura.campbell@richmondandwandsworth.gov.uk.
I have asked Healthwatch Wandsworth to check whether St Georges did in fact complete the review of its recent amalgamation of medical records, as promised, by the end of December 2025. I was directly affected by the failure to transfer critical medical records, resulting in misdiagnosis and the ultimate need to pay for my own medical treatment, however, these failings could potentially have affected every other patient locally. I have asked to be kept up to date on the response and there is a meeting of Healthwatch later on this month where local people are invited to discuss local issue so I will expect an update then, even if it is negative.