MORE than 25 patients admitted to Great Western Hospital were still waiting for a bed 12 hours later.

That shocking figure puts GWH 220th out 230 health trusts across the country for this category and is its worst performance this year.

The latest NHS England statistics show that 2,313 people who arrived at GWH’s accident and emergency ward in October spent more than four hours waiting to be treated, admitted or discharged.

Overall, 80.6 per cent of patients were treated within four hours, well below the government’s target of 95 per cent.

This figure included 98.8 per cent of minor admissions and just 63 per cent of major admissions.

Even in an emergency, some patients are still left waiting far longer than they should be.

Of the 2,306 emergency admissions to the ward last month, it took more than four hours for 836 patients to actually be admitted into a ward after the decision to admit them was made.

David Pearce spent 18 hours lying on a hospital trolley while waiting for a bed to be available after suffering heart problems last month.

His daughter Claire Newbold said: “These figures are not at all surprising. The problem is that the hospital was built based on the population of Swindon from 10 years before it was finished.

“The town has expanded a lot since then – and is still expanding – but the hospital has not catered for that. A&E gets full but there are no beds free on the wards.

“They need to make that department bigger and have more beds available.

“There’s also not enough staff to deal with every patient so all the doctors and nurses are under a lot of pressure.”

Great Western Hospital’s figures for October narrowly avoided being its worst of the year.

September’s stats saw 80.2 per cent of 11,769 patients seen within four hours, with 2,333 arrivals waiting longer than that.

During his visit to Swindon last week, health secretary Matt Hancock admitted that A&E wait times needed to be fixed.

He said: “There has been an increase in demand for A&E right across the country. It’s one of the reasons we need to hire more people and build more A&E facilities.”

A Great Western Hospital spokesman said: “We do all we can to ensure patients can begin treatment as soon as possible and the vast majority of patients are admitted, transferred or discharged within the four hour target.

“We see patients in order of clinical need and, while this means some people have to wait longer than we would like, it does allow our teams to care for the most sick patients, many of whom will have a life-threatening illness or injury.”

Plans are in the works for a £30 million expansion of Great Western Hospital that will include an urgent-treatment centre. It is hoped that this will help the hospital cope with high demand and ensure fewer patients are left waiting hours for a bed.

Across England, 84 per cent of patients were seen within four hours in A&E last month -a record low. The government’s target was last met in July 2015.