Winchester'S Royal Hampshire County Hospital has been handed a £100,000 government grant as a reward for improving emergency treatment waiting times.

The Accident and Emergency Department at the Romsey Road hospital has been handed the cash after cutting waiting times in the unit to under four hours.

The hospital's inability to meet its target was one of the main reasons it lost its all-important star rating earlier this summer and failed to attract foundation hospital status.

Winchester and Eastleigh NHS Trust, which runs the hospital, suffered a major setback when its previous three-star rating, the highest possible, was slashed to just one star after government health chiefs deemed it to be failing in two key areas.

It meant plans to get foundation status for the hospital - a move that would have seen

bosses get more control over the type of

specialist services they operated - had to be shelved.

However, news of the £100,000 grant, which will be spent on updating the physical appearance of the A&E ward, has been welcomed as the money is given out as an incentive to trusts which meet the critical four-hour deadline for assessing new patients.

Latest figures show 99.29 per cent of those seeking accident and emergency treatment

were dealt with inside the four-hour slot, against a government target of 96 per cent.

Jo Paul, director of operations and performance, said: "Staff here have been really focussed on playing their part to support the emergency department.

"Getting patients through the system efficiently is crucial because we need to have empty beds for A&E patients to be moved to.

"What happens in the rest of the hospital has a big effect on our A&E targets, which is why working well together is so important."

Also celebrating are the booking staff at the hospital, who have also made significant improvements to the way they find patients' appointments - another key area where the trust was failing.

However, staff will have to wait until next July to see if all their hard work has paid off and the three-star rating has been returned.