JUST 81 per cent of patients arriving at A&E were treated or admitted within the four-hour target last month.

The Government target for the average amount of people to be seen within four hours is 95 per cent, which has not been reached across the country since July 2015.

At the East Suffolk and North Essex Trust, which runs Colchester and Ipswich hospitals, 81.1 per cent of patients were seen within the four hour target.

There were 19,976 attendances at the trust’s emergency departments.

The figures from NHS England show there were 5,094 emergency admissions via A&E and 7,165 emergency admissions in total.

Of these 603 patients waited more than four hours from the decision to admit to admission.

One patient waited 12 hours or more.

Dr Crawford Jamieson, medical director at the trust, said: “We are committed to constantly achieving the four-hour national access standard in the emergency departments across the trust.

“We remain committed to delivering this important standard, but we do have to acknowledge there is an increase in demand for emergency and urgent healthcare at this time of year.”

Cancer waiting times were also missed at the trust.

Figures for December revealed only 62.45 per cent of patients were seen within the national standard of 62 days having been urgently referred.

Neill Moloney, deputy chief executive at trust, said: “We are committed to improving cancer performance for our patients, but we’re sorry we are not yet meeting all of the national access standards for cancer care.

“We know there is work to be done on making improvements.

“We have made progress around improving pathways of care across many specialties over the past year as we continue to work closely with both the Ipswich and East Suffolk and North East Essex Clinical Commissioning Groups.

“This huge programme of work takes into account the whole patient journey from the point of referral from a GP, to treatment in hospital. In November last year a summit was held involving all those organisations involved in local cancer care, which set out priorities including speeding up the testing process, improving collaborative working with community health providers and addressing recruitment and workforce challenges.

“There has also been major investment by the East of England Cancer Alliance to support a range of initiatives to deliver earlier and faster diagnosis for patients and improved personalised care for those people living with and beyond cancer.

“The trust has robust plans in place to make sure we meet the national access standards and we report on our progress at a regional and national level every week.”