A cash-strapped health authority is borrowing almost £100 million to pay wages, bills and suppliers.

Surrey and Sussex Strategic Health Authority (SHA) needs £97.5 million to support hospital trusts who are facing debts of more than £80 million by the end of next month.

They include Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, which is facing an overspend of more than £12 million, and Royal West Sussex NHS Trust, which runs St Richard's Hospital in Chichester, which has a deficit of more than £17 million.

Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, which runs Crawley Hospital and East Surrey Hospital in Redhill, is the worst performer with an expected deficit of more than £40 million, one of the highest in the country, The SHA, which has an overall budget of £3.1 billion, says the borrowing is necessary to protect patient services, staff wages and cover the cost of drugs.

It has already given £40 million to the Surrey and Sussex Healthcare but is now getting a further £20 million.

Brighton and Sussex will get an extra £8.5 million, Royal West Sussex £14.6 million and Worthing and Southlands Hospitals £4.7 million.

The money will come from the NHS Bank, in effect borrowing from other parts of the NHS and the Department of Health.

A small amount, just over £2 million, will come through delaying some of the SHA's planned developments in the region.

An SHA spokesman said: "We need to do this to support those trusts that are in trouble financially and we knew we would need to seek the money to underwrite their financial problems.

"Obviously we want to protect staff wages and we also need to ensure suppliers are paid and we can afford the cost of drugs.

"We will continue to work closely with the hospital trusts involved as they need to get a tighter control on their finances."

Trouble-shooting money experts have already been sent to the Brighton, Chichester and Surrey and Sussex Healthcare trusts to get them back on track.

The three are among the 18 in England named and shamed by the Department of Health as poor performers when it comes to handling money. Each of them will have their own turnaround director who will work alongside existing management teams to resolve difficulties.