HEALTH care services could face further cuts because of an extra half-a-million pound hole in the budgets of the Morecambe Bay Primary Care Trust.

At the PCT's latest meeting, the finance director of the trust, which provides community health care, revealed that it was looking at a £480,000 overspend.

The overspend has come about through a combination of factors, including:

l Increased prescribing costs for heart and anti-psychotic drugs to meet Government targets.

l Higher staffing costs for mental care services because of an increase in what the trust described as "difficult clients".

l A shortage of consultants resulting in big bills to staffing agencies to pay for cover.

The news of the overspend follows an announcement in June that the trust was making £1.9 million of cuts to balance its books.

Since then a savings plan has swung into action, which has seen efficiency savings across the service.

But there is, as yet, no plan to claw back the £480,000.

"We are currently overspending on our budget and we have to find a way of pulling that back," director of finance Kevin Parkinson said after a meeting of board members.

The trust is also facing additional financial pressure from legionnaires' disease outbreak in Barrow in August.

Mr Parkinson is lobbying Government health officials in the hope that they will pick up the tab for the costs of tackling the disease, which he said would run into millions of pounds.

Board member and director of clinical governance Dr Hugh Reeve said: "If we don't get the resources we have asked for, that will then be an added pressure."