Accident and emergency (A&E) waiting times

Accident and emergency (A&E) departments treat people with urgent illnesses, from minor injuries to life-threatening conditions. Type 1 A&E departments are what we typically think of as A&E – based in major hospitals – and account for around two thirds of A&E attendances. Speciality and minor injury A&E departments (type 2 and type 3) account for the remaining third of attendances.  

The current A&E standard was introduced in 2010. It states that 95% of people arriving at an A&E department should be admitted to hospital, transferred to a more appropriate care setting, or discharged home within four hours. The Urgent and Emergency Care Plan published in June 2025 introduced an interim minimum standard of 78% of patients seen within four hours by March 2026.

Is the four-hour A&E waiting time standard being met? 

The four-hour A&E standard has been missed every month since July 2015 at a national level. Performance has only seen limited improvement in recent years, and in 2024/25 only 59% of all attendances at type 1 (major consultant-led) departments were seen within four hours. It is also the case that more people are leaving A&E before they’ve been seen by a clinician – 5.1% of people who attended A&E in October 2025 left before being seen, up from 2.0% in October 2019.

Longer waits in A&E are contributing to poorer patient experiences. In 2024, 38% of patients surveyed at major A&E departments reported that their experience was 9 or 10, on a scale where 0 is ‘very poor’ and 10 is ‘very good’, down from 47% in 2018.

Are waits for emergency admissions increasing? 

In 2024/25, over a quarter (29%) of people who attended a major A&E department were admitted into a hospital bed. In recent years, long waits for admission have reached record levels, particularly during the winter months. The number of people waiting more than 12 hours after a decision to admit (sometimes referred to as ‘trolley waits’ or ‘corridor waits’) has increased from just under 1,000 in the quarter ending March 2015 to more than 155,000 in the quarter ending March 2025. The current target of less than 10% of patients waiting more than 12 hours was last met as a yearly average for type 1 and type 2 attendances in the financial year 2023/24, though this target was breached during the winter months of that year.

Is demand for A&E services increasing? 

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, demand for A&E services had been growing. Demand fell during 2020 and 2021 as the public was advised to stay away from hospitals while the pandemic was escalating, but demand  at major A&E departments is now 6% higher than pre-pandemic levels. In fact, type 1 A&E attendances have increased by 15% over the last decade to 16.8 million in 2024/25.

However, resources to treat A&E patients have not kept pace with demand. For example, although admissions from major A&E departments have increased by one third (34%) between 2011/12 (when data in this form was first collected) and 2024/25, the number of general and acute beds has only increased by  1%. The NHS is also facing chronic workforce shortages, with just under 70,000 vacancies in the acute sector, impacting trusts' abilities to admit and treat patients from A&E in a timely manner. 

The four-hour A&E standard is one of the most high-profile indicators of NHS performance, and poor performance is seen as a clear indication of the pressures the health and care system is under. NHS England has set a target of 78% of people to be admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours by March 2026.

To meet this target, the NHS has outlined various measures to help improve performance in urgent and emergency care. For example, £250 million has been allocated to expand the co-location of urgent treatment centres and same day emergency care, which improves both patient experience and hospital flow.