Our population’s needs and the way people access care are changing, which means we need to transform our services to support the tens of thousands of people who attend each year.

From Monday 14 April 2025, we’ll be starting a multi-million pound project to modernise our urgent care services that improves patient experience and is designed to keep patients moving through the Emergency Department.

Royal Bolton Hospital will use £1.74m in funding to reconfigure its Emergency Department and Urgent Treatment Centre to help meet national targets for 4-hour quality standard and ambulance handovers.

Once the transformation work is complete, the hospital will have a new dedicated ambulance handover area, an additional rapid handover bay and a newly-designed and modern waiting room to support new ways of working to manage rising demand for services.

Accessing the Emergency Department

Whilst works are underway a new temporary reception will be set up in a modular building outside the pedestrian entrance to the Emergency Department.

We’re asking people to only attend with a maximum of one visitor to help us manage reduced capacity in the waiting room during construction.

As with any major work, we anticipate there will be noise disruption as we work to improve our buildings and we apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

Signs and digital screens are in place to help direct you to where you need to be.

Drop-off area

The temporary reception will be situated directly outside the pedestrian entrance, limiting the number of spaces available to drop-off patients.

We would advise people, if they can, to drop-off patients at the Main Entrance of the hospital, which is a short walk to the Emergency Department.

Accessing urgent care services throughout the work

We expect the transformation work to take 27 weeks to complete.

Throughout this time, patients will still be able to access all emergency care services as usual, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The easiest way to access services is via our Urgent Treatment Centre, which is equipped to deal with both illnesses and minor injuries.

You may be referred to our UTC if you attend our Emergency Department with a minor condition, where you will be offered a pre-booked appointment.

Appointments are also available by calling 111.

Please arrive within 10 minutes of your allocated appointment. Due to pressures, we cannot always guarantee you will be seen immediately.