East Kent's beleaguered hospitals trust has been ordered by regulators to cut A&E waiting times and rein in its spiraling £40million deficit.

In a statement released this afternoon, Monitor has sharply criticised the trust's failure to hit four-hour patient turn-around targets in emergency departments.

Its criticism is leveled at care provided in Kent and Canterbury Hospital, William Harvey Hospital in Ashford, Margate's QEQM Hospital, Buckland Hospital in Dover and Queen Royal Victoria Hospital in Folkestone.

This week trust executive Chris Bown admitted it was failing to hit targets of 95% of patients treated at A&E within four hours.

Mr Bown - parachuted in on a salary of nearly £300,000 to help save the ailing trust - said its figures were in the "high 80s".

Monitor is now in formal talks with the trust to improve its targets and would "expect to see action within months".

Failure at that stage could lead to Monitor imposing a mandatory set of guidelines which the trust would have to follow.

Paul Streat, Regional Director at Monitor, said: “Since last year the trust has refreshed its leadership team and has made progress engaging the staff in the day to day running of the trust.

“The trust now needs to harness this improved staff culture to focus efforts on speeding up how quickly patients are seen in A&E.

"We also need the new management to make sure the trust returns to a good financial position for its patients.”

Mr Bown also revealed this week that the trust is facing a budget shortfall of almost £40 million.

At a board meeting last Friday, Mr Bown warned there may be "unpopular decisions ahead" as the trust attempts to return to the black.

He told the board that even if the trust delivers a planned £16 million savings plan, it could still face a deficit of about £37 million by the end of this financial year.

He blamed the massive shortfall partly on a heavy reliance on expensive temporary staff, particularly medical locums.

Last September government health regulator Monitor took the drastic action to place the trust into special measures.

It claimed it was as a result of “serious failures in patient safety and leadership”.

It followed a damning inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in March, which uncovered a catalogue of problems.

It rated the William Harvey in Ashford and the Kent and Canterbury as "inadequate", while Margate’s QEQM Hospital was said to “require improvement”.

Inspectors reported failures across all three sites, including in A&E, children's care, outpatients and general surgery.

They also found patient safety was affected by low staffing levels and cultural issues, and staff surveys cited cases of bullying.

East Kent Hospitals Trust runs three acute hospitals, including the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford, Kent and Canterbury Hospital, and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Hospital in Margate.

The trust's Director of Finance Nick Gerrard said, “The trust’s financial position is in no way related to the recent CQC inspection.

"In common with most acute hospitals, we are facing huge financial pressures. For example, a national shortage of doctors and nurses makes it difficult to recruit permanent staff in some areas, which means that to provide safe services to patients on our multiple sites we have to employ very expensive agency staff.

"We recognise we have to take action and we are working with our staff to look at ways we can provide services more efficiently, to look at how we can become more productive, for example by speeding up our recruitment processes, and at ways we can reduce our expenditure.

"We will also be benchmarking our services to see how we compare with other similar trusts and if there are any lessons we can learn.”