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Events Find events and learning opportunities from the BMA to develop you professionally as a doctor. Library & Archive As a member, access a range of e-books and e-journals and use Medline to support your research. Get help Sign in Join us Latest All Latest News View all the latest news, blogs and features from the BMA. The Doctor Read articles, interviews and comment from the BMA's award-winning magazine. Media centre View the latest press releases from our England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales media teams. Get help Sign in Join us Recent Searches Suggested results ${ item.Term } ${ item.Date } ${ item.TitleHtml } ${ item.ContentType }  Home Advice and support NHS delivery and workforce NHS backlog data analysis Analysis of monthly data releases by NHS England to highlight the growing backlogs across the NHS - including operations data, cancer waiting list GP referrals and A&E waiting times. With demand for hospital treatment outstripping capacity even before COVID-19, it is no surprise that the demands of delivering care during a pandemic have led to significant backlogs and longer waits for patients. This page provides analysis on capacity in secondary care services and is updated monthly with new data. Last updated on 13 August 2026 A growing backlog of care in England What is the backlog? The backlog in secondary care consists of the care that the NHS would normally have delivered but which was disrupted as COVID-19 impacted service delivery. This includes: patients on a waiting list for treatment who would ordinarily have been seen by now patients who have not yet presented to their GP to seek a referral for symptoms due to concerns of burdening the health service or fears around COVID-19 infection patients who have had procedures cancelled patients who have had referrals delayed or cancelled patients who have had referrals refused due to a lack of capacity. It will take years to clear the backlog. The ongoing need for stringent infection prevention control measures and workforce shortages mean it will take even longer to work through as demand continues to rise. More patients than ever are waiting for treatment High waits for treatment are not new. Prior to the pandemic in February 2020 there were already 4.57 million cases on a waiting list for consultant-led care. At the beginning of the pandemic, the combination of suspension of non-urgent services and changes to individuals’ behaviour meant that the number of people joining the waiting list initially dropped. However, this has since been rising - and despite some improvements earlier in the year, waiting times remain far higher than pre-COVID. The latest Referral to Treatment (RTT) figures for June 2026 show: The waiting list decreased to 7.27 million cases, consisting of approximately 6.15 million individual patients waiting for treatment Around 2.48 million of these patients have been waiting over 18 weeks; Approximately 106,000 of these patients have been waiting over a year for treatment – an increase from around 105,000 the previous month (June 2026). The median waiting time for patients waiting to start treatment was 11.9 weeks – a significant increase from the pre-COVID median wait of 7.5 weeks in June 2019. NHS England’s 2025/26 priorities and operational planning guidance, outlined an interim target of 65% of patients meeting the 18-week standard for elective treatment by March 2026 and 70% by March 2027. Although, there has been some progress against this target, the millions of patients still awaiting care will undoubtedly question the glacial pace toward bringing waiting lists down. The Government has prioritised reducing elective care waiting lists and pledged to restore the 92% constitutional standard by March 2029. The planning guidance also established a target to reduce the proportion of patients waiting over 52 weeks for treatment to less than 1% of the total waiting list by March 2026. Cancer targets continue to be missed The current cancer waiting times standards are: 28-days wait from an urgent referral to patient told whether they have cancer or cancer is definitely excluded standard (80%) 31-days (one month) from a decision to treat to first or subsequent treatment standard (96%) 62-days (two months) wait from an urgent referral or consultant upgrade to a first definitive treatment standard (85%) Despite the changes in the cancer care targets, services continue to operate well below operational standards. The percentage of patients told they have cancer within four weeks (28-days) of an urgent referral has remained at 79% in June 2026, unchanged from the previous month. This does not meet the new operational target of 80%. The percentage of people receiving their first cancer treatment within one month from a decision to treat decreased from 92.8% in May 2026 to 92.2% in June 2026. This is still below the 96% operational standard. The percentage of patients receiving their first cancer treatment within two months (62-days) of an urgent referral increased slightly from 69.6% in May 2026 to 69.9% in June 2026. This is still significantly below the operational standard of 85%. NHS England aimed to reach 75% performance against the 62-day target by March 2026. The poor performance against these key operational standards illustrates the level of pressure the system is under, and is a clear sign that significant investment in capacity is needed. Patients are waiting longer for emergency care Prior to the pandemic, the situation in A&E was increasingly difficult with demand soaring and the percentage of people being seen within the four-hour target reaching an all-time low over the 2019/20 winter. At the start of the pandemic, A&E attendance decreased significantly which led to performance improvements. However, since lockdown eased demand has steadily risen, reducing performance against targets. These pressures on emergency care persist into 2026, despite small improvements in certain areas. Total A&E attendances increased in July 2026 to around 2.49 million from approximately 2.44 million in June 2026. 75.4% of people attending A&E were admitted, transferred or discharged within 4 hours in July 2026, a slight decrease from the previous month (75.7%). The current NHS operational target is to improve this to 78%. In the past 12 months (from August 2025 to July 2026), approximately 1.58 million people have waited more than 4 hours in A&E. Waiting times have rocketed The combination of ongoing pressure on services, the backlog of care and chronic workforce shortages means waiting times have increased to record highs. The total number of patients waiting over 12 hours for an emergency admission decreased from approximately 49,000 in June 2026 to 47,000 in July 2026. The number of patients waiting over 12 hours for an emergency admission in July 2026 was about 105 times higher than in July 2019 – pre-pandemic. Note that this number represents an underestimate of actual waiting times, as patients will have been waiting for additional time before a ‘decision to admit’ was made. These long waiting times are, in part, due to poor patient flow. General and acute bed occupancy has consistently been at over 90% since September 2021, and patients regularly remain in hospital despite being fit for discharge because there is no capacity for them in social care. The corridor crisis One of the most prominent symptoms of long emergency department waiting times has been the deepening corridor care crisis, with patients in A&E departments increasingly spending time awaiting treatment or admission in non-clinical spaces. While these patients do often spend time on beds in corridors, many other spaces are also used, including waiting rooms, storage spaces, or queuing ambulances – all to the detriment of patient care, privacy, and dignity. Corridor care has a range of causes, including a lack of beds and capacity across NHS hospitals, persistent issues with delayed discharges from wards, and persistently high demand. The BMA has repeatedly highlighted this crisis and called for urgent, comprehensive action to tackle it, including as part of a Corridor Care Coalition alongside partners such as the RCN, RCEM, and others. As a result of that work, the UK Government and NHS England have committed to eradicating corridor care. As part of this, NHS England has published a new single definition of corridor care, confirming that: a patient has experienced corridor care if they have spent at least 45 minutes in a clinically inappropriate area of an emergency department or general and acute ward. Additionally, following significant delays, NHS England has now begun to publish data on corridor care, starting with data covering May 2026. This data shows that, in July 2026, across England there was on average: 2,300 instances of corridor care in emergency departments per day. 726 instances of corridor care in hospitals (i.e. outside of emergency departments) per day. This data collection has significant limitations and likely underestimates the true scale or depth of the problem, as it fails to record the exact length of corridor care waits and lacks any historical data to allow for comparisons. GPs are finding it harder to make referrals We can track GP referrals into consultant-led outpatient services alongside the waves of COVID-19: as the waves have peaked, referrals into secondary care have dropped. These drops are likely due to a combination of changes to patient behaviour alongside capacity issues in secondary care effectively forcing GPs to take a more cautious approach with timings of referrals to avoid having referrals rejected. GPs can still refer patients, but the pressures in hospitals means there is little capacity in secondary care, and those referrals are often rejected. The number of GP referrals to consultant-led outpatient services that have been unsuccessful because there are no slots available has jumped from 238,859 in February 2020 to a staggering 401,115 in November 2021 (an 87% increase). When GPs are unable to refer into hospital services, the care for these patients does not disappear. Instead, these patients need to be cared for by GPs while they wait for hospital treatment to go ahead, adding to the pressure in primary care. The role of the private sector What the BMA is calling for Enlisting the help of the private sector is one of the measures the Government has taken to reduce pressures on hospitals and help cut waiting lists. The extent to which private hospitals will be able to take on NHS waiting list initiatives going forward is unclear given the increased demand in the self-pay market and the backlog of private sector patients. Given that the NHS and the private sector largely draw on the same pool of doctors, additional capacity may be less than it initially appears. This was made clear in the 2020 block-booking arrangements, which saw the NHS gain facilities rather than the workforce to run them. Prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed Given the immense strain on secondary care, the BMA is calling for immediate actions to be taken to prevent waiting lists from growing faster than they already are and to prevent increased pressure on hospitals. Actions can be found in our weathering the storm report. More funding The extent to which the NHS can address these capacity challenges is in large part determined by the resources available to it. That is why the BMA has called for an additional £7 billion on top of the £10 billion previously announced. Existing resources and funds must also be directed to where they are needed the most. Measures to retain the medical workforce The BMA is advocating for measures to prevent attrition of doctors, including: stopping punitive pension tax rules flexible working options for all staff retention strategies across all grades of doctor as outlined in our rest, recover, restore report longer-term measures to grow the medical workforce which can be found in our medical staffing analysis. Planning to increase NHS capacity The Government must develop a credible plan to meaningfully increase NHS hospital capacity and ensure that the NHS is not reliant on private sector capacity in the long-term. Better collaboration between primary and secondary care Over the longer term, the BMA has called for increased measures to support effective collaboration between primary and secondary care. Read more in our report Supporting effective collaboration between primary, secondary and community care in England in the wake of Covid-19. This will help tackle: waiting lists high workload the need to adapt physical spaces to prevent the spread of infection lack of joined up IT and data sharing lack of consistent communication and trust between different parts of the health system. You may also be interested in... Our further NHS pressures analysis An NHS under pressure overview Pressures in general practice data analysis NHS medical staffing data analysis NHS funding data analysis NHS diagnostics data analysis NHS hospital beds data analysis Make the most of your membership Find the most popular BMA benefits that other members are using right now. From calculators to the BMJ online, we have a range of tools to help you professionally and personally. 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