PERFORMANCE funding of around £3.5million will be at risk if a hospital trust fails to deliver accident and emergency ward waiting targets over the next 12 months, NHS chiefs have been told.

NHS leaders have told East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust can recoup nearly £11.3million in Sustainability and Transformation Funding (STF) in 2017-18.

But finance director Michelle Brown believes the performance-related element of the STF could be almost solely dependent on the organisation meeting four-hour treatment benchmarks at the Royal Blackburn Teaching Hospital.

Before now the trust had also been gauged on its abilities to meet referral to treatment and 18-week cancer waiting list targets, which it met for February.

The trust has failed to meet the four-hour target in each month throughout 2016-17, with increasing pressure placed on the Royal Blackburn’s A&E.

Regular task group meetings are held between NHS partners to tackle everything from bed blocking to ambulance handovers and delayed discharges.

However the last three months, to February, has seen the proportion of people spending less than four hours in A&E drop to 77.3 per cent, 75.3 per cent and 79.9 per cent respectively.

Mrs Brown told a board meeting 70 per cent of STF funding depended on achieving financial parity, with the remaining 30 per cent performance driven.

“It is something that we would need to be cognisant of, going into 2017-18. We are seeing an improvement in performance but we need to understand whether we will achieve this target,” she said.

Trust chief executive Kevin McGee said the organisation would have to make contingency plans to guard against not securing the £3.5million.

The trust is predicted to meet is financial control target for 2016-17, earning a £2.5million STF incentive payment. But the expected failure to meet the 95 per cent A&E target puts another £1.2million in jeopardy. The bulk of the £12.5million on offer for 2016-17 again related to financial security.