NHS hospitals and primary care trusts that failed to balance their books overspent by a total of more than £650m, figures from the Healthcare Commission, the NHS inspectorate, have revealed.

Although others underspent, leaving the NHS as a whole with a deficit of about only £140m, a mere 0.2 per cent of the budget according to the department of health, latest unaudited figures for individual NHS organisations show some with serious financial problems.