Key Summary
- In May, NHS staff carried out an average of 75,009 planned treatments each working day, and the waiting list was the lowest since March 2023
- Over one million patients were diverted away from joining the waiting list between July 2024 and March 2025 through the Advice and Guidance scheme
- Junior doctors are planning to go on a five-day strike beginning on 25 July, demanding higher wages
The NHS waiting list fell in May for the first time in 17 years, and the total was the lowest in two years.
However, experts warn that the proposed strike by junior doctors later this month could disrupt the recovery.
As per May data, the overall waiting list dropped by nearly 30,000 to 7.36 million, the lowest since March 2023, with 60.9 percent waiting 18 weeks or less for planned care (the highest proportion since July 2022).
The NHS staff carried out an average of 75,009 planned treatments each working day in May – the highest number on record – with a total of 1.5 million treatments across the month, up from 1.45 million in April.
Around 2.5 million tests were carried out during May, a 23 percent increase from pre-pandemic levels (1.99 million in May 2019), with community diagnostic centres seeing patients closer to their homes.
In June, the A&E services recorded an average daily attendance of over 78,300, with last month seeing 14 days covered by heat health alerts.
Despite this, the highest proportion of patients were seen within four hours since August 2024 (75.5 percent), and it was the best June performance since 2021.
June also kept ambulance services busy with 759,635 incidents, the highest during the month since 2021, and the teams recorded better timings when compared with the same period last year.
The Labour government last week rolled out the 10-Year Health Plan to bring the NHS closer to home, with neighbourhood health services to be rolled out across the country, bringing diagnostics, mental health, post-op, rehab, and nursing to people’s doorsteps.
Health secretary Wes Streeting expressed satisfaction over the NHS numbers and said, “This is not a coincidence – it is because this government has delivered on the Plan for Change and put in the work to finally get our NHS moving in the right direction."
But he cautioned that the recovery was nascent and a lot more needs to be done.
Streeting urged the British Medical Association (BMA) to abandon their "unreasonable rush to strike and work with us to improve resident doctors' working lives instead”.
The junior doctors have announced a five-day strike beginning on 25 July over the government’s refusal to award them the 29 percent pay increase they are demanding.
NHS England’s Co-National Medical Director, professor Meghana Pandit, lauded the hard work of the NHS staff in bringing down the overall waiting list.
She pointed out that over one million patients were diverted away from joining the waiting list between July 2024 and March 2025, up 12 percent on the year before, through the Advice and Guidance scheme.
Pandit observed that it would be hugely disappointing "if this progress were to stall this summer due to industrial action."
Dr Rabia Aftab, a GP working at Riverside Surgery in North Lincolnshire, said: “Appropriate and meaningful use of the Advice and Guidance service can play a crucial role in facilitating more efficient and appropriate patient care."
