HEALTH chiefs are pinning hopes on expansion plans at Royal Bolton Hospital to help prevent a repeat of this winter's NHS crisis.

Bolton was among the NHS trusts which came under pressure in January as the number of people waiting to be admitted to hospital from A&E departments in England hit record levels.

In January the hospital failed to meet the target to deal with patients within four hours of arrival, with some patients waiting more than 12 hours for a bed.

Almost 80,000 patients were kept waiting more than four hours, while nearly 1,000 faced a wait of over 12 hours.

Later this year the A&E department will undergo an expansion and it is hoped the increased facilities will ease pressures on the ward.

Chief operating officer Andy Ennis said: "Our performance against the four-hour target is showing month on month improvement.

"The new extension to our Accident and Emergency Department is planned to open in the coming months which will increase our capacity and we are working closely with the North West Ambulance Service to provide a safe and efficient service for our patients."

No further details have been provided on the expansion plans.

Last month Mr Ennis told NHS Bolton Clinical Commissioning Group public board meeting that the hospital struggled to deal with demand due to the small capacity of the A&E department.

Royal Bolton has the smallest A&E in Greater Manchester with just 12 trolley spaces available for patients.

The increase in patients and small capacity has been blamed on a number of delays, including queues of ambulances and more than 250 patients waiting longer than an hour to be seen at the hospital in December.

In January only 79.2 per cent of patient in A&E were seen within the four hour target — lower than the national average — but this has improved to 85.3 per cent in February and 88 per cent so far this month.

Nationally the proportion of people seen within four hours of arriving at A&E, was the lowest on record at 85.1 percent. The target is 95 percent.

Some 1.9 million attendances were recorded at A&Es in January, down slightly on January, 2016, but total attendances in the 12 months to January showed a year-on-year increase of 4 percent.

In Bolton 8,565 people attended A&E, averaging more than 250 a day.

Between December 1 and 29, 8,804 people attended.

Health charity the Nuffield Trust have called the national figures a "dismal reading" and said corridors had seemingly become "the new emergency wards".

Jim Mackey, chief executive of NHS Improvement said: "January was an exceptionally busy month for our A&E departments and these figures show the impact that the continued high patient demand had.

"The pressures the NHS has been facing have been intense but, despite this, we have to recognise that NHS staff managed to see almost nine out of 10 patients within the four-hour target time.

He added: "The extra £100m announced in the Budget will help the NHS take steps in A&Es to help make sure more patients get seen quickly and in the right place for their needs, but there is plenty more that we need to do across the system."