WAITING times for non-urgent treatment at the Bolton trust have risen to their highest level since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, new figures showl.

Non-urgent elective operations , such as hip and knee replacements were suspended during the lockdown period to free up beds for coronavirus patients, leading to delayed care for many patients at Royal Bolton Hospital.

According to NHS rules, patients referred for non-urgent consultant-led elective care should start treatment within 18 weeks.

But NHS data shows 59 per cent of patients on the waiting list for elective operations or other treatment at Bolton NHS Foundation Trust at the end of July had been waiting longer.

That was the highest proportion since March, when 23 per cent of patients had waited 18 weeks or more,.

The figures mean 12,444 patients have been on the list for longer than the target time.

The rate was also far higher than at the same time last year, when 15 per cent of patients had been waiting beyond 18 weeks for treatment.

Saffron Cordery, deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, said the focus should not be solely on what Covid-19 stopped the NHS from doing, and called for the hard work of frontline staff to be recognised.

She added: “We are in a much better place than many would have predicted a few months ago.

“The recovery from the peak of the pandemic was always going to require step by step increases in activity and the NHS is well on the way to restoring services.”

Professor Neil Mortensen, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, said patients who have been waiting months for treatment ‘cannot afford to wait until next spring’.

He added: “We urgently need to build up our hospital reserves if we are to see this winter through.

“Flu, together with continuing local Covid-19 outbreaks, must not bring surgery to a standstill again, or thousands more will suffer.”

Nationally, 2.2 million people were still waiting for treatment after 18 weeks in July,  the highest number for a single month since records began in 2007.

At 47 percent of those on the waiting list, it was also the worst performance on record.

Some 83,000 patients had been waiting for over a year, the most for any month in more than a decade.

Meanwhile, the Society for Acute Medicine has called on the Government to ‘publish full winter crisis planning proposals which include investment into staffing and estates to cope’.

Its president, Dr Susan Crossland, said: “The NHS is struggling hugely despite the drop in elective work and we are now seeing increased pressures with admissions creeping up.”