An NHS finance chief who was desperate to meet financial targets was jailed for 12 months yesterday for a multimillion-pound fraud.

Philip Neal, 44, the former director of finance and deputy chief executive officer of the Mid Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust, admitted four counts of forgery. His defence said that he was under “immense pressure” to meet targets set by the Government and wipe out a predicted huge deficit.

Chelmsford Crown Court was told that Neal falsified valuations of hospital land to try to make it appear that the trust had achieved bigger profits. If the forgeries had not been discovered, the trust would have recorded a £1 million surplus for the financial year 2005-06. But after the true figures came out it was discovered to be £10 million in deficit.

Sentencing Neal, Anthony Goldstaub, QC, said: “You forged bogus land valuation reports designed to present a falsely inflated profit in the revenue account of the trust for that year. In so doing you acted in serious breach of the high level of trust placed on you by virtue of your profession and position at the very top of the financial management of the trust.”

He added: “The confidence that was placed in you and which you broke extends not only to the people you were working with but to the trust and Parliament, to the taxpayer at large and the patient at large – people who were financing your organisation and people who relied on it for the maintenance of their health.”

Neal, from Chelmsford, was promoted to director of finance in 2001 and was responsible for the financial management of the organisation.

In 2005 the trust predicted that it would be £5 million in debt at the end of the financial year. The Department of Health and the Essex Strategic Health Authority told the trust that it needed to bring in a surplus of £1 million, the court was told.

The board of trustees agreed that they would try to claw back some of the deficit by selling land. Neal was responsible for the sales, but he submitted valuations for the land that were inflated.

He was awarded a performance-related bonus of about £2,500, taking his pay to more than £105,000. But the external auditors, PricewaterhouseCoopers, uncovered the bogus figures and he was suspended for five months. After an investigation by the NHS counter-fraud team, Neal was arrested last September.

His defence team said that he had been working 12-hour days, while coping with underfunding of the health service. They said that it was an “unusual case” because Neal had not committed the forgery for his own financial gain.

Alan McGill, of the NHS counter-fraud service, said: “Neal seriously abused his senior position within the trust by forging important financial documents which were used to try to dupe the external auditors into believing that the trust’s financial position was much better than it was.

“Had Neal’s criminal misbehaviour not been discovered, he would have been given credit for a positive financial outcome that was based on deception.”

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