The waiting list for NHS treatment in England continued to climb during May, hitting almost 7.3 million, up from 7.22 million in April, which itself was an increase from 7.11 million in March.
The April data ended six successive months of decline in the figures since October, when 7.4 million people were in the queue for treatment.
The number of referral to treatment (RTT) pathways where a patient was waiting to start treatment at the end of May 2026 was 7.3 million.
As some patients are on multiple pathways, the number of unique patients was estimated to be around 6.2 million.
Among the 7.3 million, in 104,734 cases the patient was waiting more than a year, in 1,144 cases they were waiting more than 18 months, and in 177 cases they were waiting more than two years.
In only 65.6% of cases the patient had been waiting up to 18 weeks, and so not meeting the 92% standard.
During the month, 1,725,997 new RTT pathways were started. In contrast 293,707 pathways were completed as a result of admitted treatment and 1,133,648 were completed through non-admitted care.
For those pathways where the patient was waiting to start treatment at the end of May 2026, the median waiting time was 12.4 weeks. The 92nd percentile waiting time was 38.6 weeks.
‘Considerable strain’
Tim Gardner, deputy director of policy at the Health Foundation, said the figures showed a health service continuing to operate under “considerable strain”.
‘Waiting times for routine hospital treatment improved in May, with 65.6% of waits within 18 weeks, but the waiting list increased again to 7.28 million,” he continued.
“There is still a long way to go to restore the 18-week standard, and our recent productivity analysis highlights the need for system-wide interventions to improve efficiency across all trusts.
“A&E waiting times and ambulance response times got worse in June, reversing the modest gains seen earlier in the year.
“The recent heatwaves have only added to the pressures on services, with the extreme heat leading to surges in demand and operational pressures from overheating wards and equipment failures.
He highlighted that the NHS had achieved some important progress towards achieving the government’s top priority of cutting waiting times for routine hospital treatment.
“However, turning around a struggling health service within a tight financial settlement means trade-offs are unavoidable, and our polling consistently shows the public are most concerned about general practice and A&E,“ he continued.
“The next prime minister may need to reassess and rebalance the NHS’s priorities and focus more on improving primary care access, addressing bottlenecks in urgent and emergency care and delivering overdue reforms to social care.“
Steep mountain to climb
David Hare, chief executive of the Independent Healthcare Providers Network (IHPN), said the figures demonstrated what a steep mountain there was to climb if the health service was to meet its target for 92% of patients to receive treatment within 18 weeks by 2029.
“While there’s no one silver bullet to clearing the backlog of NHS care, making use of all available capacity in the health service and giving patients real choice over where they receive their care will be key, with research showing that NHS patients are often able to cut more than two and a half months off their waiting time by choosing an alternative provider,” Hare continued.
Hare added that too often patients were not offered these choices, with IHPN’s report showing that only one in three GPs discuss with patients the different options of where they can be treated.
“This is not because they don’t believe in choice but because of the practical barriers they too often face,” he continued.
“The government has rightly said that patient choice and empowerment should be at the heart of its work to improve the NHS, but if choice is to play its full part in reducing waiting lists and giving people greater control over their care, it needs to move beyond policy commitments and tackle the barriers GPs face to ensure choice is a routine part of every patient’s journey.”
