NORTH-East MPs have announced a new annual meeting to call to account the region’s NHS services.

Following behind-closed-doors talks with health chiefs aimed at tackling the A&E crisis, five County Durham MPs have announced a yearly summit to “monitor progress across a range of services including social care and public health”.

In a joint statement, Roberta Blackman-Woods (Durham City), Kevan Jones (North Durham), Phil Wilson (Sedgefield), Grahame Morris (Easington) and Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) said the interaction between council and NHS services and patients’ experience of this must also be kept under review.

The announcement came after talks held at Durham’s County Hall on Friday, January 30.

The MPs condemned the sight of ambulances queuing outside hospital accident and emergency departments as a waste of precious time and resources and demanded changes.

They also called on the North East Ambulance Service to reduce ambulance waiting times, particularly in rural areas.

The five Labour politicians said they were receiving more complaints about the NHS than ever before.

However, they added they were grateful to the health bosses for attending the meeting, paid tribute to the “many marvellous NHS staff” in the area and pledged to do all they could to support the health service.

The most recent figures show an improvement on A&E waiting times across England, to 92.3 per cent of patients being seen within four hours. However, that is still below the target of 95 per cent.

For the County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust, which runs hospitals in Darlington and Durham, the figure was 76.9 per cent; while at the North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust it was 93.1 per cent.

At South Tees, the result was 88.3 per cent.