WARRINGTON North MP Charlotte Nichols met with the Rt Hon Wes Streeting MP, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, along with MP for Warrington South Sarah Hall, to discuss the Government’s targeted support for Warrington and Halton Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
Active measures taken by the Government have led to a reduction in waiting times across NHS Foundation trusts including Warrington and Halton. The Further Faster Programme, launched in September last year, has been rolled out across twenty trusts and their integrated care systems. The aim is to improve and streamline pathways for patients and spread good practice in areas with high levels of economic inactivity, for reasons including ill health.
The latest data from October 2024 to January 2025 shows waiting lists in the selected trusts have fallen on average at double the rate of the rest of the country with waiting times down 130% faster than the national average. A total of 37,000 cases have been removed from waiting lists across the Further Faster cohort of trusts averaging nearly 2,000 patients per local trust.
As part of the programme Warrington and Halton NHS Foundation trust have broken new ground by running super clinics for gynaecology delivered at weekends, with one-stop models reducing the need for follow up appointments.
Charlotte Nichols MP said,“I met with Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care along with Sarah Hall, MP for Warrington South to catch up on what this Government is doing to cut NHS waiting lists in our area. Thanks to Labour’s targeted support, Warrington and Halton NHS Foundation Trust is one of twenty selected trusts across the country to have a team of leading clinicians in place specifically to tackle waiting lists. This team is working at twice the speed to get people the care they need and help patients recover faster than areas without this support in place.
“There is still a long way to go, and much more work to do, but things are starting to move in the right direction with our waiting list coming down over five consecutive months and extra appointments available for many specialisms including gynaecology.
“We will continue to make the case for a new hospital, and an urgent care centre as an interim measure which we are long over-due, to future-proof our health services locally now that they are on the path to recovery”.
More widely, this February the Government announced that over two million extra NHS appointments including for chemotherapy, radiotherapy, endoscopy, and diagnostic tests were provided nationally, as government delivers first step to fix the NHS seven months early.”
Sarah Hall MP added: ““This is just the start. Labour is delivering on its promises to fix the NHS backlog and provide better, faster care. I will continue to work with NHS leaders and the government to ensure Warrington gets the resources and support it needs.”
“I am delighted to see Warrington and Halton benefiting from this targeted approach to cutting waiting lists. Behind these numbers are real people in our community, residents who have been in pain, waiting too long for treatment. The progress we are seeing is a huge step forward in ensuring patients get the care they need, when they need it.
“The success of this programme means thousands of patients in Warrington and across the country are being seen sooner, helping them get back to their daily lives.”
Health Secretary Wes Streeting said: “The investment and reform this government has introduced has already cut NHS waiting lists by 193,000, but there is much more to do.”
1 Comment
All well and good but what is he doing about the unacceptable waiting times for appointments at doctors surgeries in the town ?