NHS regulators are to take control of health services in three entire regions of England where hospitals are failing, the Guardian has learned.

The move is an unprecedented measure to correct system-wide failure in three regions, that will be revealed by the chief executive of NHS England on Wednesday.

Essex, North Cumbria and Northern, Eastern and Western Devon are the areas affected by the move.

Essex Hospitals there have been struggling with staff shortages, waiting time failures and financial problems that have damaged patient care.

Key NHS bodies and regulators will impose a newly-devised and euphemistically named “success regime” on the three parts of the country, and push through determined action to ensure hospitals, GP surgeries and other NHS service providers work together much more closely to tackle deep-seated problems which previous initiatives have failed to banish.

Previously failing hospital trusts have been placed in special measures but this is the first time that this type of takeover across multiple trusts spanning whole regions has been enacted. It will reignite the debate about the current state of the NHS and its funding.

Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, will announce the radical intervention when he addresses thousands of NHS managers at the NHS Confederation’s annual conference in Liverpool on Wednesday.

One of the three areas to receive what NHS sources describe as “coordinated external help” is Essex, where all the local acute hospital trusts have experienced major problems and several have already been put into special measures in the wake of the Mid Staffs scandal to try to turn them round.

The move will see NHS England working with Monitor, and the NHS Trust Development Authority moving in to take charge of a huge transformation of how services are delivered.

Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, will announce the radical intervention at the NHS Confederation’s annual conference in Liverpool on Wednesday. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian

An NHS source said: “Everybody knows that there are areas of the country where problems involving staffing, finances and quality of care are really deep-seated, sometimes linked to the geographical isolation of the major local hospitals.

“Usually the response to failings in an individual trust is to sack the chief executive, get a new one in, then sack them after two years because they haven’t sorted things out, even though the reality is that the problems are in the whole area, such as out-of-hours GP services not working well and that causing hospitals to not meet the target of treating 95% of A&E patients within four hours of their arrival.

“The ‘success regime’ will end that short-term approach by giving such areas external, coordinated help, because they are struggling.”