THE region’s hospital trusts face a continuing battle to bring down budget deficits amid fears that the NHS is facing a “financial meltdown”.

Recent figures showed trusts across England and Wales will end the year £2.2bn in debt.

Chancellor George Osborne has now handed the NHS an urgent £3.8bn cash injection in a bid to stave off a looming winter crisis, while 10,000 extra health professionals have been promised in the current parliament.

A cap on expensive agency staffing rates was also introduced on Monday, although critics say trusts are effectively paying for a situation not of their own making because of a shortage of nurses.

A spokeswoman for County Durham and Darlington NHS Trust said it was currently projecting a deficit of £14.7m, although this was in line with its planned position.

It said it had to increase additional temporary staff to ensure that wards which were caring for more frail, elderly patients were able to do so safely.

South Tees Hospitals NHS Trust, which has cut costs by £26m, said it was forecasting a £2.8m deficit by the end of the financial year.

This would be a reduction on the £5.2m deficit it reported at the end of last month.

It said between April and October this year it spent £2m on locums for consultants, doctors and junior doctors and £283,000 on staff nurses, healthcare assistants and clerical workers.

A spokeswoman said: “Clearly we do rely on agency staff in some hard to recruit areas.

“Nurse recruitment is a major issue across the country although the trust currently has a six per cent vacancy rate compared to the national average of ten per cent.”

North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Trust said it had a “very long way to go” to achieve its aim of a £7.4m deficit by the end of the year.

Director of finance Lynne Hodgson said: “We have already seen very high levels of demand and we’re likely to see this increase over the winter, which will put financial pressure on the trust.”

The trust spent £5m in 2014/15 covering essential nursing and medical staff posts with agency staff and estimated a cap would cut its bill by £1m a year.

Sarah Dodsworth, regional director of the Royal College of Nurses, said there had been a chronic underfunding of the NHS workforce and significant sums of money needed to be invested in the long-term.