Regional health chiefs are to bail out cash-strapped primary care trusts to the tune of more than £30m, the M.E.N. can reveal.

Struggling primary care trusts will be handed the cash so they can balance their books by the end of the month.

Bury will get £18m, Oldham will get £9m and Stockport will get £6m. NHS North West say PCTs – which buy and provide community health care – will only be given the money if they prove they are tackling their debts. But it is not clear whether the trusts will have to pay back the cash – and, if so, when.

PCTs across the region face a tough challenge to try to balance the books before they are axed and replaced by consortia of GPs in 2013. They are battling the toughest economic conditions for the NHS in almost a decade.

A spokeswoman for Bury PCT said: "Allocations are funds provided to primary care trusts to spend during each financial year. NHS Bury has received a non-recurrent allocation in this financial year from the strategic health authority.

"As an overriding principle, each PCT has been requested by the strategic health authority to ensure that its financial recovery plans demonstrate that all underlying financial pressures have been addressed."

She added that Bury was tackling its debts and since September – when it was overspending £1.3m a month – it has halved the figure to around £700,000.

Oldham has introduced a ‘gateway referral’ system where all treatment requests from GPs are checked against tough criteria to check they are proven to have a positive impact on patients and represent good value for money.

A spokesman for Manchester PCT said it had not received a bail-out in 2010-2011 but admitted it had been working ‘within a tight financial environment for a while’. He said it had made ‘significant in-roads into delivering a recurrently balanced financial position’ and was working towards breaking even this year.