Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford is among 30 Trusts to receive extra money to fight winter pressures.
Same-day emergency care services at the Royal Surrey County Hospital will receive an investment of £2.818,000. The urgent treatment centre there will be either developed or expanded.
Elsewhere, the South East had six bids for a total of £30.2m accepted;
The emergency care fund will pay for extra beds and improvements for UTCs and same-day emergency care facilities in 20 Trusts nationwide. Funding will also go towards creating 900 ‘new’ hospital beds ahead of winter.
However, some trust bosses have raised concerns over timelines and staffing issues. The Royal Surrey, part of Surrey Heartlands ICB, has operated the major hospital with 25% less staff than it needs. Based in one of the country’s top areas for house prices, and with rents rising rapidly, finding staff is becoming increasingly difficult.
Its share of the £250m pot is part of commitments made earlier this year in the NHS urgent and emergency care recovery plan, which pledged £1bn for 2023-24 to increase capacity (see the complete list of schemes in the table below)
The funding will go towards creating 900 “new” hospital beds ahead of winter, which includes more than 60 intermediate care beds, improving assessment spaces and cubicles in accident and emergency departments, and developing or expanding urgent treatment centres and same-day emergency care services.
Trust leaders welcomed the funding but raised concerns about the announcement, stating that much of the extra capacity would not be in place until January and also raised questions about how extra beds would be staffed.
NHS England expects the “majority” of these schemes will be completed by January.
This included an additional 5,000 “permanent, fully staffed” beds. – 4,000 will be formerly “temporary” beds made permanent – ahead of this winter.
There were seven schemes given the green light in London, more than any other part of the country, for a total of £47.8m. However, while only five bids were accepted in the Midlands, these received more investment than in London, at £59.8m.
Figures reveal that 74 per cent of patients nationally were seen within the four-hour target in July – a slight improvement on the 71.1 per cent figure recorded in the same month last year. Average category two ambulance response times were also down by 27 minutes in July of the previous year. However, around 100,000 people are still waiting 12 hours or more in A&E to be admitted.
NHS Providers director of Policy and Strategy Miriam Deakin said:
“Trust leaders will be very concerned that this extra capacity is only expected to be in place by January. For the best results, trusts would need these new beds before winter begins.”
Rory Deighton, director of NHS Confederation’s Acute Network, said:
“NHS leaders may also have questions on how these beds will be safely staffed given that vacancy numbers remain high, the long-term workforce plan is in its infancy, and industrial action is ongoing.”
NHSE chief executive Amanda Pritchard said:
“Our winter plans, which build on the progress already made on our urgent and emergency care recovery plan, aim to reduce waiting times for patients and to transform services with an expansion of same-day care and virtual wards, helping patients to be cared for in their own home where possible.”
Full list of schemes
| Region | ICB | Trust | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| East of England | Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes | Milton Keynes University Hospital FT | £3m |
| East of England | Cambridgeshire & Peterborough | North West Anglia FT | £12.5m |
| East of England | Norfolk and Waveney | Norfolk Community Health & Care Trust | £19.3m |
| London | North East London | Barts Health Trust | £2.7m |
| London | North East London | Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals Trust | £3m |
| London | North West London | London North West University Healthcare Trust | £22.6m |
| London | North West London | Chelsea and Westminster Hospital FT | £2.9m |
| London | South East London | King’s College Hospital FT | £3.9m |
| London | South East London | Lewisham & Greenwich Trust | £10.6m |
| London | South West London | Croydon Health Services Trust | £2.1m |
| Midlands | Coventry & Warwickshire | George Eliot Hospital Trust | £15.1m |
| Midlands | Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland | University Hospitals of Leicester Trust | £24m |
| Midlands | Nottingham & Nottinghamshire | Nottingham University Hospital Trust | £9.9m |
| Midlands | Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin | Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust | £21.4m |
| Midlands | Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent | University Hospitals of North Midlands Trust | £13.4m |
| North East and Yorkshire | Humber & North Yorkshire | Hull University Teaching Hospitals Trust | £2.8m |
| North East and Yorkshire | North East and North Cumbria | South Tees FT | £10m |
| North East and Yorkshire | South Yorkshire | Barnsley Hospital FT | £2.4m |
| North East and Yorkshire | West Yorkshire | Airedale FT | £4.1m |
| North West | Lancashire and South Cumbria | Lancashire Teaching Hospitals FT | £15m |
| North West | Lancashire and South Cumbria | East Lancashire Hospitals Trust | £4.9m |
| South East | Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West | Buckingham Healthcare Trust | £10.6m |
| South East | Kent and Medway | Dartford and Gravesham Trust | £2.5m |
| South East | Kent and Medway | Medway FT | £3.9m |
| South East | Surrey Heartlands | Surrey and Sussex Hospitals Trust | £6m |
| South East | Surrey Heartlands | Royal Surrey FT | £2.8m |
| South East | Sussex | University Hospitals Sussex FT | £4.5m |
| South West | Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire | Sirona Care and Health CIC | £4.9m |
| South West | Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly | Cornwall Partnership FT | £3m |
| South West | Devon | University Hospitals Plymouth Trust | £5m |
What Waverley urgently needs is more affordable homes for key workers this needs intelligent planning capacity that engages the community and develops the scarce land supply for public good not developer profit. There are too many developer loopholes to avoid building affordable homes, Governments must close them, and Local Planning Authorities engage the powers that they have to reduce Waverley’s housing affordability ratio from over 17:1.