At the time of its launch it had 2,000 hospital beds and over 17,000 staff, and served a population of over 1 million.

[3] Owen Williams, who is chair of NHS England’s Health Inequalities Expert Advisory Group, is the Chief Executive.

[4] In December 2021, the trust planned to open virtual wards which would to reduce hospital occupancy to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic in England.

At that point, the number of patients in A&E breaching the 12 hour target had gone from 250 in September to 267 in October, a sharp rise from 18 in April.

[6] In June 2022, it announced plans to set up a 500-bed virtual ward using Dignio technology for patients with a variety of different conditions.