Qualitywatch
Independent scrutiny of the quality of health and social care
NHS performance dashboard
Tracking NHS performance, waiting list and waiting time statistics for England
- In March 2026, 23% of patients attending A&E waiting over four hours to be admitted, transferred or discharged. The March 2026 target of 22% was missed by less than one percentage point
- Ambulance response time for category 2 calls (emergency conditions such as stroke or heart attack) is below the 30min target for the second consecutive month with 26 minutes and 18 seconds in March 2026.
- 7.2 million cases were waiting to start planned (elective) hospital treatment in February 2026. Almost 63% patients were seen within 18 weeks, an improvement toward the interim target of 65% seen within 18 weeks by March 2026.
A&E and ambulance waiting times
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.