Royal Bolton Hospital de-escalates major incident status

Royal Bolton Hospital scaled back its major incident status at 20:00 GMT on Tuesday

The Royal Bolton Hospital is no longer under "major incident" status, but all non-urgent operations have been cancelled on Wednesday.

The hospital was one of several across the country that declared major incidents throughout Tuesday.

Moves to ease the situation included taking clinical staff off non-urgent work to help, and arranging additional transport for those being discharged.

The hospital trust said there remained "a lot of pressure" on its services.

A spokeswoman said its major incident status was de-escalated at 20:00 GMT on Tuesday, but non-urgent surgery on Wednesday would be rescheduled.

On Tuesday, 53 people in the hospital's A&E department were seeking treatment at 13:00 GMT - 15 of whom were waiting for a bed.

Some patients faced almost a 12-hour wait for a bed after the decision to admit them.

'Major incident' definition for local NHS organisations

"Any occurrence that presents serious threat to the health of the community, disruption to the service or causes (or is likely to cause) such numbers or types of casualties as to require special arrangements to be implemented by hospitals, ambulance trusts or other acute or community provider organisations."

Source: NHS England Commissioning Board