A COMPUTING error raised questions over £30,000 spent by the chief executive of Andover hospital on travel and subsistence.

Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (HHFT), like all hospital trusts, must publish any spending over £25,000 and with the organisation handling millions of pounds each year this often occurs hundreds of times a month.

But in June HHFT declared that chief executive Alex Whitfield had spent £30,000 on travel and subsistence with financial advisory company Deloitte LLP.

The category often indicates hotel stays, meals, train fares, but the high figure arose questions.

The Advertiser contacted HHFT to clarify what the money was spent on but was told that this was a computing error.

A trust spokesperson said: “The coding on the report is incorrect (because the original invoice defaulted to a code which had previously been used for a review of travel expenses).

“This invoice was actually for a number of workshops related to our outpatient activities. Sorry for the confusion.”

The mistake has now been rectified on the trust’s website.