NHS England waiting list rises to 7.37 million treatments, highest since October 2025

Waiting list rises despite record summer activity

The August total covered 6.24 million patients, up from 6.21 million at the end of July. An estimated 113,339 people had waited more than a year to start routine treatment, up from 111,379 a month earlier. The list remains below its record high of 7.77 million treatments in September 2023.

The government has promised that 92% of patients will start treatment within 18 weeks by 2029. Around 65% begin treatment inside that window now.

NHS England said a record 4,738,824 planned treatments, procedures and appointments took place across June, July and August, more than in any previous summer. Professor Frankie Swords, the NHS national medical director, credited staff for that output. She pointed to "ominous" early signs of winter pressure. More patients were arriving at A&E with flu and other respiratory viruses than usual for the time of year. The service also recorded its busiest September for A&E attendances and ambulance incidents.

The list turned upward after December

The list stood at 7.31 million treatments at the end of November 2025, down from 7.40 million in October and the lowest since February 2023, when it was 7.22 million. It fell again to 7.29 million in December. The King's Fund said more than 120,000 were added to the list from the start of 2026 through August, when it reached 7.37 million.

Sarah Scobie, deputy director of research at the Nuffield Trust, said the balance between referrals and treatment delivered had not changed much over those months. Much of the reduction was therefore likely to have come from reasons other than the NHS boosting activity, she said, citing data cleaning as one example.

Gaps by income and ethnicity

NHS England began publishing waiting times broken down by deprivation, age, sex and ethnicity in July 2025. The Health Foundation analysed the April 2026 data and found a 1.1 percentage point gap: 62.5% of people in the most deprived areas had waited less than 18 weeks, against 63.6% in the least deprived. That was the smallest gap since the breakdown began, down from around 1.8 points in June 2025, but it meant around 7,400 people in the most deprived areas waited more than 18 weeks in a single month.

The charity said some differences may reflect clinical priorities, because people in poorer areas and some minority ethnic groups are younger on average and the NHS prioritises older or sicker patients. It also said earlier analysis found inequalities persisted after taking age into account, and that gaps appeared across almost every speciality and much of the country. Inequalities in waits over 52 weeks narrowed substantially, driven largely by Birmingham, Solihull, Greater Manchester, Lancashire and South Cumbria.

Emergency care and the winter ahead

In England, 74.4% of patients waited four hours or less in September, down from 75.0% in August. Waits of more than 12 hours from a decision to admit to actual admission rose to 50,582 from 44,951. An average of 3,310 patients a day received corridor care that month, up from 2,865 a day in August.

Health secretary Yvette Cooper said the NHS had been increasing delivery and performance while demand grew. She urged eligible people to get the flu jab and other vaccines. Pressure will rise again in winter, she said.