An “internal critical incident” has been declared at Queen's Hospital in Romford, its boss has confirmed.

Matthew Trainer, chief executive of Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust (BHRUT) which runs Queen's, commented on X today (March 15) that the hospital has been in internal critical incident mode since Tuesday (March 12).

He was responding to journalist Shaun Lintern, health editor at The Sunday Times, who posted a screengrab earlier today which appeared to be an alert from BHRUT which said: "We have declared a critical internal incident at Queen's Hospital due to bed pressures across the site."

The alert said all non-essential meetings had been stepped down.

Echo: Matthew TrainerMatthew Trainer (Image: BHRUT)

Responding, Mr Trainer wrote: "We’ve been in it since Tuesday. We don’t put these on the website because it’s about us changing how we work, not asking patients to do something different. Not a secret tho (sic).

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“I’m not convinced “A&E is busy” messages are much use. Haven’t seen any evidence they change behaviour."

The trust said this week that the latest NHS figures saw it achieve its best performance in  February since July 2020 with around 75pc of all patients attending the trust's A&Es seen and treated within four hours.

BHRUT has been contacted for comment.