ALL of the health authorities in Bolton need to pull together to prevent another A&E crisis at the Royal Bolton Hospital, the leader of the council has urged.

Representatives from Bolton NHS Foundation Trust, Bolton Clinical Commissioning Group and Bolton Council gathered in the town hall to hear how the health and carer system is coping with a rise in admissions at the hospital.

The trust has had to cancel non-emergency operations and called a "major incident" earlier this month as it struggled to cope with the number of people being admitted to hospital because they are critically ill.

The health and wellbeing board were told how the trust continues to be "incredibly busy", and 22 extra beds, made available during the winter crisis, will remain open until March.

The situation has been the subject of political argument, with Labour MPs blaming the difficulties on cuts to social care budgets, while Labour-run Bolton Council has stated they coped well with the additional pressures.

Chief executive of Bolton Council Sean Harriss urged people to understand the complexity of the problems faced by health bodies across the borough as they seek to deal with the needs of an ageing population.

He said: “I think it’s understandable that there has been a lot of national and local commentary about what caused the pressures on the A&E department.

“I think it is important, as a strategic body, that we don’t seek to simplify or have a knee-jerk reaction to these issues, which by their very nature are complex.

“Broadly this is not about the number of people coming to A&E that don’t need to be there, as in other parts of the country — we have older patients, people are more ill, and that needs a different type of analysis.”

He also stressed that work to integrate the health system — so that a patient has a seamless transition between GP, hospital and care provided by social services — is in its early stages.

Dr Colin Mercer, the quality and safety lead at Bolton CCG, said in his day to day work as a GP he was seeing more elderly, frail patients with complex needs, which he believes is leading to a rise in the number of people going to hospital.

He said: “The age of many of my patients is 85 plus — that would be unheard of 10 years ago.

“Many of them are eight different types of medication or more.

“They are like toddlers — when they get something that you or I would feel a little poorly with, it completely floors them and they are not able to carry on with.

“But I haven’t tested that theory out and we need to test that out, but I suspect that this is what we are going to see.”

Cllr Linda Thomas, deputy leader of Bolton Council, said she hoped the meeting had "cleared the air a bit" between the health partners.

She added: “We are doing well, we have to hold our nerve and keep calm.”