MILLIONS of pounds is being injected into the trust which runs Colchester Hospital to try and speed up the recovery of NHS services.

The East Suffolk and North Essex Trust (ESNEFT) has been awarded £10million in a bid to tackle lengthy waiting lists caused by the pandemic.

The money is part of £160million funding from the Government to implement innovative ways to increase the number of elective operations hospitals deliver.

The funding comes after the latest figures showed a record number of patients had been waiting a year or longer for routine treatment at ESNEFT.

Overall, the latest available data shows 55,312 people were waiting to start hospital treatment at the trust at the end of February - an increase of 5 per cent on January.

As part of the multimillion pound plan ESNEFT patients will be part of initiatives including one-stop testing facilities and pop-up clinics to allow patients to be seen and discharged closer to home.

Other upcoming trials include virtual wards, 3D eye scanners, at-home antibiotic kits and artificial intelligence in GP surgeries.

Nick Hulme, chief executive at ESNEFT, said this additional funding is strongly welcomed.

He said: “Treating so many Covid patients over the past year along with additional safety measures has inevitably had a knock-on effect on non-urgent care, but with the virus in retreat thanks to the extraordinary success of the NHS vaccination programme, our system’s mission now is to rapidly recover routine services.”

Stephen Dunn, chief executive at West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Today’s announcement is excellent news for patients in our community, who will be able to benefit from new approaches to their care that will help us treat more people, more quickly.

“Waiting lists are not about numbers but about real people and this funding will help us make a vital difference to the everyday lives of our patients.”

As part of recovery plans for elective care announced in March, GPs, specialists and their teams are also focusing on those on the waiting in most urgent clinical need and who have been waiting longest.

Nationally, a total of 4.7 million people were waiting to start treatment at the end of February - the highest figure since records began in 2007.