Best time to visit Northumbria Healthcare A&E is between 8am and 9am on a Wednesday

It comes as A&Es across England are at breaking point, with attendance reaching pre-pandemic levels in November and a record proportion of patients facing waits of more than four hours.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has announced an additional £3.3 billion in NHS funding to deal with increased demand and soaring inflation, but health think tank the Nuffield Trust said it is too late "to have a meaningful impact this year".

NHS Digital figures show that the worst hour of the week to visit A&E at Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust was between 2am and 3am on Tuesdays in the year to March.

Patients waited an average of four hours and 45 minutes to be either admitted to an inpatient ward, transferred elsewhere or discharged from hospital.

Meanwhile, the shortest waits were between 8am and 9am on Wednesdays, when patients waited an average of one hour and 17 minutes.

Of the seven days of the week, Monday was the worst day overall to visit A&E at Northumbria Healthcare, with patients waiting an average of two hours and 21 minutes, while Saturday was the best, when the average wait time dropped to two hours and seven minutes.

Monday saw the highest average number of patients attending across the year, while Saturday saw the lowest.

The figures come as the NHS deals with increasing pressures during the recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

Separate NHS England figures show more than 30% of patients waited more than four hours to be seen at A&Es across England in November – a new record for the third month in succession.

The Nuffield Trust said a significant factor is the growing number of patients taking up hospital beds as they wait to be discharged because support from health and care social services outside of hospital is not ready.

Jessica Morris, fellow at the Nuffield Trust, said: "Patients with no choice but to stay in hospital beds when they are medically fit enough to be cared for elsewhere is a serious problem for both the patients and NHS staff across the system."