Hospitals in Kent have ended the year more than £100m in the red, figures show.

Health chiefs of the county’s acute trusts have insisted patient care will not be compromised and say they have recovery plans in place to deal with the deficits.

The figures come in the week the government has announced a major funding boost for the NHS.

However, there are fears the boost in funding could be used to cut deficits rather than invested on frontline care.

Trusts say the deficits are related partly to increased demand for services and the need to pay agency staff to plug vacancies.

In a sign of the cash crisis facing trusts, none in Kent qualified for a share of the government’s £1.8bn Sustainability and Transformation Fund to those who met savings targets.

The Medway NHS Trust, which runs the Medway Maritime Hospital, has ended the financial year with a £61m deficit - a £24m increase on its forecast.

The deficit of £61,825m is the highest reported of 55 trusts in the south region and comes against a backdrop of continuing pressure on Kent’s acute health services.

The trust said it had a financial recovery plan in place and was working hard to make savings.

Chief executive Lesley Dwyer said: “We currently have a significant, long-standing financial deficit that we are committed to resolving. We know we have a duty to our patients, staff and community to spend NHS resources wisely, but we will not compromise on the quality of patient care while doing so.”

“We have developed a financial recovery plan to address our deficit over the next three years.

"There is an opportunity now for us to transform services for our patients through our Better, Best, Brilliant improvement programme. We are working hard to look at how we can reduce inefficiencies, tackle overspending on pay to agency staff, and work with our commissioners and other partners to provide services the community needs within the available budget.”

She added: “We have demonstrated that we can transform the safety and quality of the care provided to our patients. We are confident we can do the same for our financial position.”

East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust saw its deficit rise by £16.3m to £20.7m.

It said plans were in place to eliminate the deficit without affecting patient care.

A spokesman for the trust said:“East Kent Hospitals is one of the biggest hospitals trusts in the country, serving a large ageing population.”

"We, like many trusts across the country, face significant financial challenge because there have been huge medical advances which have led to much more effective treatment with people living longer with a better quality of life.”

“This is great news but it also means there is much more demand for NHS services which has continued to increase across the country putting pressure on NHS budgets.”

"We continue to work hard to operate more efficiently to reduce our deficit and invest in services. Last year we delivered a £33.1m cost improvement plan, with a final financial deficit of £19.4m.”

"We have another £30m of cost improvement plans this year to further reduce the deficit. The focus of this improvement work has been to increase efficiencies across the health care system to ensure every penny we spend goes into patient care. Schemes include becoming less reliant on agency staff; providing faster more effective treatments."

The Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust reported a £15.7m deficit against a forecast that it would be £1.6m in the black.

The trust said: "The plan was to achieve a £1.6m surplus however clinical income reduced significantly and cost pressures around capacity and safety generated overspends against the plan. We plan to reduce our deficit significantly in the forthcoming year by improving efficiency of services through redesign, and reducing pay and non-pay costs."

"We plan to reduce the use and cost of agency staff during 2018/19. Change to staff numbers as a result of service redesign will be thoroughly assessed for the impact on quality of service before it is implemented.

The Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells Trust recorded a deficit of £10.9m having expected a £6.7m surplus.

It said it had saved £24m but that fell £9.2m short of its stretching target. It had also seen £3.5m less income generated by treating private patients.

There would be no staff cuts or reduction in patient treatments, saying it planned to reduce its reliance on agency staff to help curb costs.

According additional funding for the NHS in the form of a £1.8 billion annual ‘Sustainability and Transformation Fund’. This funding contributed to a fall in deficits, but 44 per cent of trusts still overspent their budgets in 2017/18, with acute hospitals accounting for just under 90 per cent of all providers in deficit. The NHS provider sector as a whole ended 2017/18 with a deficit of £960 million.