Millions of pounds are to be ploughed into helping the region's struggling NHS through winter - as stark figures reveal one in five people in hospital should not be there.

A new tranch of cash from the Department for Health and Social Care is being rolled out nationwide, geared at helping speed up hospital discharge.

Currently, 20pc of all hospital patients in the region's three largest hospitals are medically fit to leave, but unable to be discharged due to social care shortages.

The crisis has prompted the government to create a new money pot - the £500m discharge fund - which is designed to finance measures of freeing up hospital beds quicker.

Government figures suggest Norfolk and Waveney is set to receive just short of £7m across two payments from the scheme - the first arriving in December and the second in January.

However, at a meeting of the Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care Board, chief executive Tracey Bleakley said the final figure was expected to be "around £10m".

It comes on top of an initial £11.7m granted to the region to finance a winter plan designed to steer the NHS in Norfolk and Waveney away from system collapse.

Ms Bleakley said: "There are two tranches of winter funding. The first, the £11.7m, we found out about in September and that is focussed on buying more beds.

"There are 233 new beds, the majority of which are now open to the public.

"The public might think, quite reasonably, in that case, why do we still have ambulances waiting outside of our three main hospitals?

"Part of that reason is we are now only just getting back to the position we were in last year, when we needed to buy more beds."

However, she added, the short notice of the latest award meant it had yet to be determined how the money would be spent.

She said: "We now have an additional tranch, a share of the £500m.

"In our system we have just over £10m and that is really focussed on what we call pathway one - when people are leaving hospital and need domiciliary care in their own homes.

"We do not have an answer to how we are spending that money yet as it was only announced at the end of last week."