The NHS says March always sees a surge in people coming forward for routine treatments and surgery, often after thinking ‘I’ll get that checked in the New Year’
The NHS waiting list has gone up for the first time in seven months after a surge in patients coming forward for routine care.
More people have come forward for non-urgent treatments and operations after the busiest winter in NHS history. The rise of 18,751 appointments taking the backlog to 7.42 million in England will be a blow to Labour who had boasted of finally turning the tide against NHS waits which had surged for over a decade under the Tories. Health Secretary Wes Streeting said: “Since day one, we have been clear it will take time to reverse the disastrous waiting list we inherited. But since July, real progress has been made – including over winter. We have overseen a massive increase in appointments available to meet rising demand, reduced long waits and helped people get diagnosed quicker.
“Thanks to the hard work of NHS staff, we have now delivered more than 3.6 million extra appointments, helping hundreds of thousands of people get off the waiting list and get on with their lives.”
A Government source pointed out that the NHS waiting list has seen a large increase between March and May every year outside of the pandemic since 2015, by an average of 68,00 extra appointments.
A senior NHS source said it is due to a tendency of people thinking “I’ll get that checked in the new year”, adding: “People get flu or winter viruses and worry about that and then realise they have a mole or something.”
NHS England pointed out it has delivered over 4.5 million extra treatments in the first three months of 2025. Professor Sir Stephen Powis, the national medical director, said: “The scale of demand that our frontline NHS teams are managing is enormous. Today’s figures show that each month, they are having to not only deal with an historic backlog, but they are also working to keep up with the hundreds of thousands of new patients that need our care.
“In March we saw a particularly sharp rise in referrals yet staff still managed to deliver more for patients with 100,000 more treatments delivered and thousands more getting a timely diagnosis for cancer. It is a good thing that more people are coming forward for care and I would urge anyone who has health concerns to come forward and get checked out as soon as they can.”
The new figures show an estimated 7.42 million treatments were waiting to be carried out at the end of March, relating to 6.25 million patients. The elective waiting list is up slightly from 7.4 million treatments and 6.24 million patients at the end of February.
The data from NHS England show some progress in cutting very long waits. Some 1,164 patients in England had been waiting more than 18 months to start routine treatment at the end of March, down from 1,691 in February. A year earlier, in March 2024, the number stood at 4,769. There were also 7,381 patients who had been waiting more than 65 weeks to start treatment, down from 13,223 the previous month. This figure stood at 48,967 in March 2024.
NHS England said the health service delivered over 100,000 more treatments in March compared to the same month last year. It added that it was the busiest March ever for the number of tests and checks carried out.
The average response time in April for ambulances in England dealing with the most urgent incidents, defined as calls from people with life-threatening illnesses or injuries, was seven minutes and 43 seconds. This is down from seven minutes and 52 seconds in March and is the quickest time since May 2021 – but it remains above the target standard response time of seven minutes.
Ambulances took an average of 27 minutes and 34 seconds last month to respond to emergency calls such as heart attacks, strokes and sepsis. This is down from 28 minutes and 34 seconds in March. The Government and NHS England have set a new target for this figure to average 30 minutes across 2025/26.
Mr Streeting added: “Our Plan for Change will continue to put patients first as we work to end the misery felt by millions up and down the country who have been denied the care they need for too long.”
Sarah Scobie, deputy director of research at the Nuffield Trust, said: “The number of people facing extremely long waits for a hospital appointment has reduced, but progress in bringing down the overall waiting list is stalling. The Government is hoping that initiatives like expanding use of advice and guidance in general practice will help, so a big question as ministers prepare the 10-year health plan is whether things will get back on track with driving down the backlog.”