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 January 2025 show: 

• The waiting list stood at 7.40 million cases, consisting of approximately 6.24 million individual patients waiting for treatment
• Around 3.02 million of these patients have been waiting over 18 weeks;
• Approximately 194,000 of these patients have been waiting over a year for treatment – a decrease from around 199,000 the previous month (January 2025). 
• A median waiting time for patients waiting to start treatment was 14.2 weeks – a significant increase from the pre-COVID median wait of 7.5 weeks in February 2020. 
   

NHS England’s 2025/26 priorities and operational planning guidance, published in January 2025, confirmed a new target of 65% of patients meeting the 18-week standard for elective treatment by March 2026. 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

Changes to cancer waiting times standards came into effect from 1 October 2023 with the following three core measures replacing the previous standards:

• 28-days wait from an urgent referral to patient told whether they have cancer or cancer is definitely excluded standard (75%)
• 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 increased from 73.4% in January 2025 to 80.2% in February 2025   – above the operational target of 75%. NHS England’s 2025/26 planning guidance includes a new interim target to improve performance on this metric to 80% by March 2026. 

The percentage of people receiving their first cancer treatment within one month from a decision to treat increased from 88.8% in January 2025 to 91.8% in February 2025. 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 decreased slightly from 67.3% in January 2025 to 67.0% in February 2025. This is significantly below the operational standard of 85%. NHS England aims 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 2024, despite small improvements in certain areas. Demand for care across all A&E departments remained high in March 2025, with total monthly A&E attendances increasing to 2.39 million.

75.0% of people attending A&E were admitted, transferred or discharged within 4 hours in January 2025 , an increase from the previous month (73.%). The current NHS operational target is to improve this to 78%. In the past 12 months (from April 2024 to March 2025), approximately 1.65 million people have waited more than 4 hours in A&E. 

In March 2024, NHSE introduced three new targets as part the Urgent and Emergency Care capital incentive scheme. The trusts that met these performance targets would be eligible to receive additional capital funding in 2024-25.

These included:

1. The 10 trusts delivering the highest level of 4-hour performance during March will each receive £2 million.

2. The 10 trusts who deliver the greatest percentage point improvement in March (compared to January 2024 performance) will each receive £2 million.

3. The next 10 trusts who deliver the greatest percentage point improvement in March (compared to January 2024 performance) would each receive £1 million.

The BMA has raised concerns regarding the introduction of the capital incentive scheme, on the basis that it risks creating perverse incentives for Trusts, diverting support away from where it is needed most, and widening existing health inequalities.

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 47,623 in February 2025 to approximately 46,766 in March 2025. The number of patients waiting over 12 hours for an emergency admission in March 2025 was about 29 times higher than in February 2020 – 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.

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

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.

What the BMA is calling for