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
- A&E attendances hit a record high number of 2.5 million in May 2026.
- In May 2026, more than 50 thousand A&E patients waited on a trolley over 12 hours from the decision to admit to admission, a 17% increase from May 2025.
- In April 2026, 7.2 million cases were waiting to start treatment, an increase of more than 110 thousand cases since the previous month.
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.
See our complete list of NHS constitutional access standards and interim planning objectives, 2025/26–2028/29.
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.