NHS performance dashboard

This dashboard provides an overview of NHS performance in England.

In January 2026, 28% of patients attending A&E waited over 4 hours to be admitted, transferred, or discharged. A reduction of 6% is required to meet the target of 22% set to be achieved by the next two months.
Over 70,000 patients waited over 12 hours in A&E for a bed in January 2026 after it was decided that they would be admitted - this is the highest number on record yet.
7.3 million cases were waiting to start planned (elective) hospital treatment in December 2025, while progress toward the target of 65% seen within 18 weeks remains stilted.

A&E and ambulance

Waiting times for diagnostics and planned care

For interactive charts showing the quality of health and social care over time, please refer to our 200+ indicators.

Notes

Two month (62 day) cancer waits are from urgent suspected cancer referrals, breast symptomatic referrals, urgent screening referrals, or consultant upgrades.

Between May 2019 and May 2023, in response to proposals made in the Clinically-Led Review of NHS Access Standards Interim Report, 14 hospital trusts acted as field testing sites for alternatives to the existing four-hour A&E standard. During this period, these trusts did not report performance on the four-hour standard and are hence absent from the data for May 2019 to May 2023. Reporting on the findings of the Clinical Review of Standards for Urgent and Emergency Care is now available.

Methodology

The data used in this dashboard is extracted from NHS England’s monthly performance statistics publication. This is published on the second Thursday of each month. It provides data from the previous month for A&E and ambulance performance, and for the month before this for elective care, cancer, and diagnostics performance.

Qualitywatch