LONDON — Queen’s Hospital in Romford built its emergency department for around 325 patients a day. It now regularly treats more than twice that number, the government said on Sunday, as it put £42.1 million toward transforming the department, the largest item in an urgent care package it rounds to almost £140 million.
The package, issued by the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England and Health and Social Care Secretary Yvette Cooper, funds 14 new schemes in England, from urgent treatment centres and ambulance fleets to emergency department upgrades. Cooper said winter “will be more challenging for our NHS this year, after such a heavy summer.”
The same release says 25 further sites announced in April “will be open for winter.” Its own table lists eight of them as not yet open. Seventeen are marked open. The other eight carry expected dates: one in October, two in November, three in December and two in January 2027. The release does not say what “open for winter” is meant to cover.
The Department of Health and Social Care says the 14 schemes come to “almost £140 million.” Adding the line items in its table gives £138.67 million, by TEH’s own addition. Four allocations run over several years: £7.7 million over four years at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, £18.4 million over three years for emergency department digital systems across London, £6 million over two years at Basildon Hospital and £1 million over two at the University Hospital of North Tees. The release does not say how much of the total is spent this winter.
| Region | Schemes | Funding | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| London | 2 | £60.50m | 43.6% |
| East of England | 6 | £34.46m | 24.9% |
| Midlands | 3 | £31.25m | 22.5% |
| North East and Yorkshire | 2 | £7.76m | 5.6% |
| North West | 1 | £4.70m | 3.4% |
| Total | 14 | £138.67m | 100% |
| Source: Department of Health and Social Care release, October 18, 2026. Regional totals and shares are TEH’s additions of the 14 line items. Four allocations are multi-year, so the figures are not one year’s spending. | |||
London takes £60.5 million between the Romford project and the digital scheme. None of the 14 schemes is in the South East or South West, although those two regions account for 15 of the 25 April entries.
The National Audit Office framed the problem differently in a September report. It found the NHS met the four-hour A&E target for 74.9 percent of attendances in 2025-26, against a target of 95 percent that the NHS last met nationally in 2013-14. NHS England had made “significant investment into A&E,” the audit office said, “but so far this has only resulted in modest gains.” The answer, it added, may be “not only a question of more resources, but also how those resources are deployed.”
Two of the 14 items, worth £26.1 million together, are digital tools aimed at patient flow, a theme the audit office also stressed. Dr Emma Rowland, NHS Executive Director for Performance and Delivery, said the service is “doing everything we can to reduce pressure on our emergency departments.” Nothing in the release says how far the 14 schemes are meant to lift that 74.9 percent, or by when.
