GWENT'S health board is trying to free up more than 200 hospital beds before Christmas, to create capacity it believes it needs to cope with festive season and winter demand.

Aneurin Bevan University Health Board wants to free up 110 beds at the Royal Gwent, 57 at Nevill Hall Hospital, and 38 in community hospitals, ahead of the very busy Christmas and New Year period.

It is working with Gwent's five councils to help discharge patients to their homes or care settings, supporting them with a range of social care packages.

The health board has drawn up - with input from councils, the Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust, and the voluntary and charitable sectors - a winter plan through which it hopes to manage rises in demand, and the pressures they create, from December-March.

It contains too, a plan within a plan, targeting an 18-day period during and either side of the festive season, when hospitals are usually at or very near capacity, and emergency departments struggle to cope.

A health board report forecasts "significant pressure" in that period, "especially because Christmas and New Year both fall in the middle of the week, with anticipated high demand due to the weekends either side of Bank Holidays".

After that 18-day period, the health board must also provide extra beds to cope with demand through the rest of the winter.

A programme of other winter initiatives is being introduced to ease pressure on hospitals. These include:

l Extending access to GP surgeries in some areas into evenings, weekends and bank holidays;

l Supporting older people who have fallen but are not injured to remain at home;

l Increasing capacity in emergency units to support patient flow and to help resettle frail older people at home after assessment;

l Increasing the number of paramedics and nurses in ambulance contact centres, to assess 999 calls.

The Welsh Government awarded more than £3 million to the health board to support its winter plan, and almost £1.9m of this will fund the winter-wide extra bed capacity and the 18-day festive season plan.

Routine day surgery is set to be suspended for two weeks after Christmas, and routine gynaecological surgery during January, to help ease bed pressures, though urgent and cancer surgery will be maintained.