Callers to Southend and Basildon’s 111 helplines waited nearly eight times longer to access help last month than just five months previously.

NHS England data shows it took an average of 621 seconds, or around 10 minutes, for Mid and South Essex 111 helpline operators to answer calls from people seeking medical help in September – nearly eight times longer than in April (79 seconds).

And of 44,033 calls made to the service, 25 per cent were abandoned before being answered.

This was much higher than the percentage in April, when 10 per cent of 42,993 callers gave up before speaking to an operator, and far above the NHS’s target of keeping abandoned calls under 3 per cent.

Of the calls answered by Mid and South Essex 111 helpline, 9,736 were recommended to attend primary care services, such as their GP, 2,204 were told to attend an emergency department, and for 3,348 callers an ambulance was called.

Across England, 1.9 million calls were made to 111 in September, but a quarter of them were abandoned.

The average waiting time was 557 seconds, around nine minutes.

Although April saw 14,500 fewer calls, the average waiting time was considerably lower, at 100 seconds, as was the rate of abandoned calls (7 per cent).

Health think tank the Nuffield Trust said increasing waiting times for the urgent helpline were symptomatic of the high level of pressure on health services.

Dr Sarah Scobie, deputy director of research at the Nuffield Trust, said: “Increasing waiting times across the board are a result of the continued impact of the pandemic including staff absences.

“There were an average of over 73,500 staff absent in the last week of September, and the increasing number of Covid hospitalisations we are seeing this autumn suggests a difficult winter ahead.”