Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to achieve the 95 per cent four-hour A&E waiting time in (a) Merseyside and (b) the North West.

The NHS Improvement Emergency Care Intensive Support Team is currently working to provide specialist support to systems across the North West region. Six trusts¹ with challenged Emergency Departments routinely reporting ambulance-hospital handover delays are engaging with North West Ambulance Service as part of an initial 90-day improvement programme, which has now been extended further. In addition, eight trusts² have received Urgent and Emergency Care capital investment this winter to make improvements to accident and emergency.

NHS England’s ‘Operational and Planning Guidance for 2019/20’ sets out deliverables against key performance areas and the Government expects the National Health Service to deliver these actions in full as key steps towards fully recovering performance against core access standards.

Notes:

¹Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, East Lancashire Hospital NHS Trust, Lancashire Teaching Hospitals Trust, Aintree University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, and Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust.

²Aintree University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust, Wirral University Teaching NHS Foundation Trust, Lancashire Teaching Hospitals Trust, University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay, Stockport NHS Foundation Trust, and Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust.