Former civil service chief Lord Kerslake, who now chairs King's College Hospital NHS FT, has warned that transformation changes to the health service are long-term and will not solve the sector's current cash crisis.

In an interview with HealthMJ he called for a transformation fund but added: ‘If care budgets get further squeezed it will be more difficult to get discharges and costs will go up. At Kings we're at 90% capacity and forecasting a shortage of beds. It will take several years to deal with the deficit and we will need ambitious efficiency savings, a changed healthcare system with fewer admissions and more discharges but we can't do that in five years.'