THE body responsible for managing King George Hospital owes more than any other hospital trust in London - after slipping more than £35 million into the red.

Barking, Havering and Redbridge NHS Trust (BHRT)owes a total of £35,674,000 according to the annual Auditors’ Local Evaluation (ALE) - nearly three times as much money as the capital's next poorest performer.

Whipps Cross University Hospital Trust was one of the six other London trusts also found to have failed to meet minimum financial management standards during the past year - out of a total of 24.

The news comes at a bad time for BHRT which was found to be 'underperforming' in a range of key areas in a recent government report.

The body also received one of the lowest patient satisfaction scores of any London trust for its A&E services in a Health Care Commission report published earlier this year.

A Trust spokeswoman said: “As the report points out, the Trust is dealing with a substantial historic debt that dates back several years.

“If a Trust is recording a deficit, then the Auditors’ Local Evaluation gives it an automatic overall rating of ‘inadequate’.

“However, the Trust has made savings of £28 million in the last financial year, and has increased its score from ‘inadequate’ to ‘adequate’ in seven of the 13 key areas examined by the auditors. This means that we are now performing adequately in nine of these areas and are on course to eradicate the deficit.

“We are in the middle of a successful turnaround programme to tackle our financial situation, with the full support of NHS London and our partner PCTs.

“Patient care is our main priority and we are working to ensure that we can make savings without impacting on front line services.

“The programme has already been a success. During 2008/09 we made £28 million savings, while also seeing improvements in clinical performance.”