NHS accountants have blamed staff shortages for further debts at Oxfordshire's hospitals.

The Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust, responsible for Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital, Churchill and Radcliffe Infirmary, and The Horton in Banbury, has overspent by £2.6m in a month, putting them £7.6m in the red.

Last month, managers at the trust admitted that combating patient waiting times by using agency staff and the private sector, had forced them to overspend by £5m in the first five months of the financial year.

The problem has worsened, and in September the trust spent £1.7m alone on 468 agency workers, to fill vacancies at the four hospitals.