ALMOST £1 million has been handed to the Alexandra Hospital and Worcestershire Royal Hospital to try and ease A&E problems this winter.

The funding will see Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust benefit from a combined £920,000.

It is part of a £100 million fund from the Department for Health, designed to ease problems at 70 sites across the country.

Under Government targets 95 per cent of patients are meant to be admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours of visiting A&E, but the acute trust keeps on missing the target.

Half the £100 million has now been allocated, with Worcestershire's Acute Hospitals NHS Trust one of the first to be offered some extra money.

It comes after Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Worcestershire Royal was the hospital he was the most concerned about in Britain.

It will be spent this coming winter, in a bid to avoid a repeat of last year's huge problems which led to two patient deaths.

And two months ago NHS England said more patients are enduring 12-hour 'trolley waits' to be admitted into Worcestershire's hospitals than anywhere else in the country.

A spokesman for the Worcestershire NHS Hospitals Acute Trust said it was unable to comment on the £920,000 funding due to rules around the election period.

But bosses at the acute have bid for £29 million from NHS England to beef up provision at their sites in Worcestershire including extra A&E capacity, more car parking, additional beds and revamped operating theatres.