GREAT Western Hospital’s A&E experienced its busiest January on record, as pressure on the NHS soared.

Almost 7,000 people attended the Swindon emergency department last month, up from 6,721 in the same month in 2016.

Overall, 75 per cent of patients were seen within four hours, compared to 84 per cent last year.

Hospital bosses have long complained that the Swindon A&E is not big enough. The department at the PFI hospital, which opened in 2002, was designed to deal with around 48,000 people a year but is regularly treating almost twice that number.

In December, ministers promised GWH nearly £30m to expand the emergency department. Work is not expected to start for several years.

Nationally, NHS figures showed a record number of patients waiting more than four hours to be treated at A&E. 76.1 per cent of patients were treated within four hours. The government’s target is 95 per cent.

Dr Taj Hassan, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said: “These are the worst figures on record, showing that despite the positivity around the NHS long-term plan, the suffering affecting our patients in emergency departments in England has not gone away at all.

“Sadly, the situation afflicting our emergency departments has become seemingly normalised with a ‘chronic crisis mode’ that does not allow staff to deliver the quality of care they would wish and patients should rightly expect.”

NHS England said emergency department performance had improved since the start of December, despite the health service coming under real pressure.