The Greater Manchester A&Es where thousands of patients waited more than 12 hours

A number of hospital trusts in Greater Manchester have been ranked among the worst for waiting times at A&E departments across the country.

Five NHS trusts across the region saw patients waiting over 12 hours to be admitted, transferred or discharged after presenting at accident and emergency in February.

For the first time, NHS England has published data on the number of patients having to wait more than 12 hours - and ranked trusts accordingly.

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The hospital trust in our region with the highest proportion of people having to wait over 12 hours in February this year was Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust, where 19.7 per cent of patients had to wait for this amount of time.

Elsewhere across Greater Manchester, of the 7,615 people who attended Bolton NHS Foundation Trust in February, 1,120 or 14.7 per cent had to wait more than 12 hours.

All data has been rounded to the nearest five attendances and is provisional, reports the PA news agency.

The latest figures come as junior doctors staged four days of strike action after a row overpay. Medics formed picket lines outside a number of hospitals across the region this week.

An estimated 350,000 appointments, including operations, were expected to have been cancelled across the country as a result of the action that follows years of what critics say are real-terms pay cuts that the government refuses to rectify.

The government say will they will not enter talks unless the British Medical Association drop their demand for a 35 per cent pay rise and call-off the strikes.

The new NHS data has been ranked by the proportion of all attendances waiting over 12 hours starting with the