ALMOST £10million is planned to be spent to reduce pressure on an accident and emergency department.

East Lancashire Hospitals Trust has submitted a bid for £7.5million to further expand its emergency care provision on the Royal Blackburn Hospital site.

An extra £2.4million will be invested by the trust as part of the scheme should the bid be successful.

It comes as pressures last winter saw the A&E at the hospital likened to a ‘war zone’ with long waits, patients on trollies and cancelled operations all reported.

Just 83.7 per cent of patients who attended the hospital’s A&E in 2017/18 were seen within the target four-hour period.

The funding bid is part of a national investment programme which has seen more than £145m pledged by the government to NHS trusts ahead of winter to improve emergency care.

Trust bosses said the project to improve emergency care will be delivered in three phases.

Similar funding received last year will see phase one, the opening of a new extended Ambulatory Emergency Care Unit (AECU) at Royal Blackburn Hospital, happen on Friday.

The unit, which will initially open for 12 and a half hours a day, will manage adult patients who arrive at hospital with conditions including low risk chest pain.

The project will see AECU relocating from the old ambulatory care unit to the new site on level one and will focus on assessment, stabilisation and treatment of patients who can be discharged home the same day.

Phase two of the project, subjected to funding being approved, will see the unit increase its provision to 16 hours a day from January next year.

The third phase would bring the two acute medical units at the hospital together into one, which trust bosses said would ‘allow both the medical and nursing workforce to work flexibly in an ideal location at the front end of the hospital.’

The units are the first point of entry for patients who are referred to hospital as emergencies by their GP or who require admission from the emergency department.

John Bannister, director of operations the trust said the new unit and project aims to ‘relieve pressure’ on emergency and urgent care departments and reduce patient waiting times.

He said: “This purpose built unit aims to improve quality by enabling patients to access appropriate treatment sooner.

“This will also provide our patients with a better environment and experience.

“In addition to this, for those patients who require a return follow up appointment, there will also be a new ambulatory care review clinic service.

“This will operate for three hours per day, initially for two days per week expanding to five days as the demand builds.”

It comes after plans were announced last year to invest £5m to £10m of capital funding to pay for an expansion of the hospital’s A&E and to provide two extra clinical rooms.