\n<\/p>\n
The NHS is set to miss key targets to shorten waiting times for help at A&E, cancer care and planned hospital treatment, leaving millions of patients facing persistently long delays.<\/p>\n
The health service in England will not deliver a series of milestone improvements in its performance that ministers demanded it achieve by the time the fiscal year ends on Tuesday, a Guardian analysis of the NHS\u2019s most recent data has found.<\/p>\n
The lack of progress raises questions about pledges made last week by Wes Streeting, the health secretary, to get key waiting times back on track by the end of the parliament in 2029.<\/p>\n
The findings will concern Keir Starmer, the prime minister, given Labour\u2019s commitment to \u201cget the NHS back on its feet\u201d and the public\u2019s strong desire to see an end to the routinely long waits for care that crept in from 2015.<\/p>\n
The gloomy picture on waiting times also comes despite the NHS handing hospitals an extra \u00a3120m in recent weeks to fund a pre-deadline \u201celective sprint\u201d \u2013 of extra appointments and more operations \u2013 intended to bolster its chances of delivering the necessary improvements by 31 March.<\/p>\n
Streeting has repeatedly promised to ensure that 92% of people waiting for non-urgent hospital care such as appointments and operations get it within 18 weeks by 2029. However, the NHS only saw 61.5% of patents within 18 weeks in January. That was up on its 58.9% performance in January 2025 but still too low to hit the 65% year-end target for 2025-26.<\/p>\n
Graph <\/p>\n
Only 52 of the service\u2019s 150 trusts \u2013 one in three \u2013 managed to deliver 65% performance in January.<\/p>\n
In addition, 112 trusts \u2013 70% of the total \u2013 had not delivered an additional requirement to improve their performance by at least 5% compared with the year before. The position at 44 trusts on the 18-week standard had worsened, amid unrelenting demand for care and a major NHS budget squeeze.<\/p>\n
The service is also off-track to meet its year-end target for increasing the proportion of A&E patients treated within four hours. It was told to deliver 78% performance by 31 March. However, in February it managed to do so with just 74.1% of A&E arrivals \u2013 still short of the 78% target.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese missed targets have very real human consequence. Patients will now be forced to face long delays for care they desperately need due to an NHS that isn\u2019t up to scratch,\u201d said Helen Morgan, the Liberal Democrats\u2019 health spokesperson.<\/p>\n
\u201cLabour promised the world but have delivered little on our NHS. Patients still languish on corridors, can\u2019t see a GP and wait too long for treatment. This is the biggest of all Starmer\u2019s broken promises.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Guardian analysis also found that the NHS was due to miss the deadline to improve \u201ccategory two\u201d ambulance response times after a 999 call \u2013 which includes callouts for strokes and heart attacks \u2013 to an average of 30 minutes.<\/p>\n
In January, response times had improved but were still at 30 minutes and 25 seconds. Six of England\u2019s 11 ambulance trusts hit the target but five did not. The 30-minute target by the end of 2025-26 is meant to be a step in a series of annual improvements to help the NHS once again deliver its official target of 18 minutes.<\/p>\n
More positively, the NHS is boosting patients\u2019 satisfaction with getting GP appointments \u2013 another key target for this year \u2013 which is the public\u2019s joint NHS priority, alongside speedy A&E care.<\/p>\n
\u201cRecent progress is encouraging, but meeting the government\u2019s pledges to reduce waiting times will require a herculean effort,\u201d said Tim Gardner, the assistant director of policy at the Health Foundation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s touch and go whether the current \u2018sprint\u2019 will be enough to meet this month\u2019s interim target, with substantial variation across the country and some trusts struggling to even get close,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Projections by the thinktank suggest Labour will not be able to deliver its pledge to ensure that the NHS is again giving 92% of patients elective hospital care by 2029, he said.<\/p>\n
Speaking last week to the Guardian\u2019s Politics Weekly podcast, Streeting insisted that the government would not just hit that target but also get back to four-hour A&E care, cancer patients receiving their first treatment within 31 or 62 days and ambulances arriving within eight or 18 minutes of an emergency call, depending on the severity of the illness or injury.<\/p>\n
He did so hours after a speech in which he stressed that \u201cfor the first time in 15 years waiting lists are falling, down by 374,000 since this government came to power\u201d. That, and the first rise in public satisfaction with the NHS \u2013 albeit only to 26% \u2013 showed Labour\u2019s medicine of \u00a326bn extra funding and its 10-year health plan was helping to revive the NHS.<\/p>\n
Labour inherited a waiting list in which 6.3 million people were waiting for 7.62m treatments. But by January that had fallen to 6.13 million patients waiting for 7.25m episodes of care.<\/p>\n
\u201cOverall there has been some progress [on waiting times since Labour took office in July 2024]. But it was from an incredibly low base and was already trending upwards,\u201d said Stuart Hoddinott, an associate director of the Institute for Government thinktank.<\/p>\n
\u201cCrucially, additional funding and staffing are not translating into rapid improvements in performance,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, a separate analysis shows that the number of people in England waiting for a diagnostic test has hit 1.8 million \u2013 the highest since the Covid pandemic \u2013 and that delays in getting an X-ray or scan are limiting the NHS\u2019s ability to crack its still-huge backlog of care.<\/p>\n
Research by Magentus, a firm that works with NHS diagnostics services, also found:<\/p>\n
The number of people forced to wait more than 13 weeks for a test \u2013 well over the six-week supposed maximum \u2013 has risen to 139,652, the highest number since January 2024.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Marlen Suller, Magentus\u2019s managing director for clinical diagnostics, said: \u201cDiagnostic waiting lists are still growing, which can mean worrying waits for many patients. A test or scan is the starting point for many people\u2019s journey through the healthcare system, and delays at this stage can hold everything else up. It can mean a longer wait for treatment to begin, and people who don\u2019t need further care can\u2019t be discharged and safely moved off the waiting list.\u201d<\/p>\n
An NHS spokesperson said: \u201cAnalysing old data misses the fact that the NHS is currently working flat out to achieve its ambitions and has improved dramatically since the end of January. NHS weekly management information shows that this effort has got us within a hare\u2019s whisker of the 18-week target, with two weeks to go. We\u2019ve delivered record numbers of appointments, tests and scans in 2025 and reduced the waiting list to its lowest level in three years, and year-long waits to their lowest level in almost six years, alongside seeing and treating record numbers of patients for cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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