Huddersfield’s health officials plan to shave £3.4m off their bill with NHS hospitals next year and spend more on private ones.

Greater Huddersfield Clinical Commissioning Group (GHCCG) has laid out its spending plans for 2015/16 and managers have admitted the task of finding cash for patients has never been tougher.

GHCCG has a £288m budget for the coming financial year - £3.8m more than in 2013/14.

But finance chief, Julie Lawreniuk, has said next year’s budget is extremely “tight”.

“The plan is very challenging,” she said to members at GHCCG’s March governing body meeting.

“I don’t believe it’s unachievable, but it’s tight.

“We need to be very careful about any decision we make in the next year.”

Mrs Lawreniuk said she was pulling the £3.4m “slug” out of their planned spend with Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Trust – which runs Huddersfield Royal Infirmary (HRI) and Calderdale Royal Hospital (CRH) – to reflect the “activity they didn’t deliver in 2014/15”.

The CCG and the hospital trust previously had a fixed price contract worth roughly £123m but the last few years have seen a drop in NHS patients using HRI and CRH with many opting to be seen at the region’s independent hospitals.

The NHS constitution allows patients to choose from a host of providers for certain outpatient services and elective surgery, including BMI at Birkby and Spire at Elland.

Together the two hospitals have earned more than £1m more than their planned £4.2m worth of activity from Huddersfield patients this year.

Some of the drop in activity at the infirmary and Calderdale Royal was due to a lack of senior doctors causing a shortage of appointments.

The planned increase in spending on private hospitals in 2015/16 is £1.2m.

Dr David Hughes, a member of GHCCG’s governing body, asked: “If we take £3.4m out of the hospital trust, what’s the risk that they can’t perform at all?”

“We can’t be giving them money for nothing as we don’t have any,” replied Mrs Lawreniuk.

“If we were sat here with an investment pot of £5m we may be doing things differently.

“We continue to work with them to make sure they have a fair contract going forward.”

Other cuts include £7.1m found from “efficiency” savings and reductions in spending of £187,000 with Yorkshire Ambulance Service and £169,000 on mental health services.

Despite the cuts Mrs Lawreniuk has admitted a further £1.7m must be found as the year goes on.

Dr Steve Ollerton, Chairman of GHCCG, added: “The challenge has never been so great, not only for us but for our providers.”