Patients are being left waiting in ambulances for more than half an hour at hospitals in Southend and Basildon.

Details of the delays have been outlined in a report from Southend’s Clinical Commissioning Group.

The latest figures show that go up to October 2018, show that in that month Basildon Hospital had 286 instances of ambulances taking more than 30 minutes to transfer a patient to A&E – the equivalent of almost 10 each day.

The delays have been increasing every month since June when they were at 113.

Delays were not as severe in Southend, which recorded 63 in October. This was a reduction from 130 the previous month and the lowest number last year.

The report notes that work had been taking place at the hospital's A&E department and they expected that once this was completed the number would drop to zero.

Dr Caroline Howard, clinical director for the Emergency Department  and Medicine, said: "Work has been completed at Southend Hospital for the ground floor addition onto the Emergency Department that will help speed up assessment and treatment at peak periods and help reduce ambulance offload times.

"Unfortunately ambulance breaches have continued since the opening for several reasons. The main reason is that the department in common to all UK departments experiences ‘exitblock’ most days of the week - that is when the in-patient hospital beds do not become empty as quick as possible so we are left with many patients ready to be admitted remaining in the department for a number of hours."

The new two-floor extension to the department brings a new rapid assessment and treatment area with six bays, as well as extra waiting areas and staff offices.

Dr Howard added that the extension has introduced a new way of working which staff are still getting used to and this has been made more challenging due to growing nursing and consultant vacancies.

While the CCG has not provided data for beyond October, the Rochford and Southend East Labour parliamentary candidate Ashley Dalton claimed earlier this month that Southend Hospital had 295 patients faced delays of at least 30 minutes during December.

A spokesperson from Basildon University Hospital said: "The hospital is working closely with commissioners to update the recovery plan which supports the delivery of the zero tolerance target for Ambulances waiting more than 60 minutes.

"In comparison to last year our performance has improved significantly. Work has been undertaken so far with a 81% reduction in 60 minute ambulance delays to date.

"Further work is being undertaken within the hospital to address the increase in ambulance delays over 30 minutes, such as the ambulance streaming process, allocated clinical staff to meet and assess the patients’ needs on arrival and the development of a multi- disciplinary working group to review practices and performance ."