The majority of outpatient appointments and operations were cancelled this afternoon at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital. In Telford services at the Princess Royal Hospital were mainly as normal, but high levels of demand at times led to cancellations.

Debbie Kadum, Chief Operating Officer at The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, said:

“Shropshire’s main acute hospitals are experiencing exceptionally high level of demand and as a result we have needed to take every available step to ensure we can continue to provide support for the people arriving as emergencies.

“This does mean that we have needed to cancel surgery and outpatient appointments so that we can focus all of our staff and resources on providing care for people with urgent or critical needs.

“We would like to apologise to anyone who has had their appointment or operation cancelled today and reassure you that we are doing all that we can to resume normal services as soon as possible. Given the very high levels of demand that have continued to increase over the last twenty four hours we have put our internal major incident procedures into effect to support this, and we are working closely with our local health and social care partners to do this.

“We will provide regular updates via our website, Twitter and local media.

“Our highest priority at all times is to provide the safest services for our patients.”

“We are asking people to reduce avoidable pressure on Emergency Services by only calling 999 or attending A&E departments for serious or life threatening illnesses and injuries.

“We would also like to thank staff for their efforts during these times of high demand, and their continued commitment to safe, compassionate, timely care for patients.”