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) Southampton and (b) the South East.

The University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust has several schemes in place to improve hospital flow and four-hour accident and emergency performance. These schemes include a focus on clinical standardisation, general practitioner streaming, criteria-led discharge and weekend discharges, and front door frailty teams.

More widely, steps are being taken to improve performance across the South East region. The national Urgent and Emergency Care Director and CEO of NHS Improvement have agreed a plan which focuses on the five streams that have seen the largest decline between winters to understand the drivers and what support is needed to improve performance. In addition, there will be a specific focus on overall weekend discharges to improve patient flow.

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.