Cash-starved Epsom and St Helier NHS Trust is to receive a £786,000 boost over the next two years.

The financial package is part of the Government's £100 million strategy for cutting down waiting times in A and E and cancelled operations.

The trust, which is heading for a £5 million overspend, had announced some operations were going to be delayed.

It will receive an extra £154,306 to pay for more nurses this financial year and £632,243 next year.

The trust is also set to tackle staff shortages by attempting to provide affordable housing for staff. One of the schemes being considered include erecting temporary buildings on a derelict part of the site at St Helier to provide more accommodation.

It intends to recruit 120 nurses from overseas in the next 12 months and 41 will be arriving from Spain and the Philippines in January.

Around £50,000 is to be spent on refurbishing Ferguson House at the St Helier site and the trust is to apply for £140,000 worth of funding to renovate below-standard accommodation for the doctors.

Mary Wells, director of clinical operations at the trust, said: "This additional money is welcome.

"We are already working with doctors, nurses and managers on a project to improve the admission of elective patients as well as looking at ways of improving our services to emergency patients.

"The trust is determined to meet the NHS Plan target that patients should not spend more than four hours in A and E from arrival to admission, transfer or departure."

Since October, 90 per cent of emergency patients needing admission have been found a bed within four hours.

A new medical assessment unit to help speed the admission process is to be opened at St Helier Hospital.

November 30, 2001 14:31