One in 10 A&E patients waited over 12 hours in 2025

BBC analysis shows one in 10 patients attending major A&E units in England last year spent more than 12 hours there.

In 2025, 1.75 million patients waited this long to be treated and discharged or to find a bed in a ward; This figure is slightly better than 2024.

The Royal College of Nursing has warned that corridor care, where long waits and patients are left in temporary areas for hours, is having a devastating impact.

The union has published testimonies from members in the UK describing unsafe and undignified care; One nurse said animals were treated better at vets.

The government said this was unacceptable, but it was still dealing with the legacy it had inherited.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting acknowledged corridor maintenance remained a problem, saying the NHS was “falling short”.

“This should never be normalized,” he added.

He said he was committed to ending the practice before the end of parliament and would soon start publishing data on it to ensure transparency.

However, he said some measures, such as ambulance response times, had improved compared to last year.

He pointed to progress on the hospital waiting list, saying patients are “starting to feel the difference” in other areas of care as well.

Regarding corridor care, RCN members expressed embarrassment and embarrassment at the situation, saying patients were being squeezed into corridors and treated in kitchens, dining areas and side rooms.

In one of the cases, a nurse reported how a patient died after suffocating unnoticed in the hallway, while others said they had to put sheets around patients while performing special procedures.

A nurse in the north-west of England said: “It breaks my heart when I’m at work and there’s often an elderly patient in the corridor and they come back two days later and they’re still there.”

One nurse from Southwest noted that the system was broken and patients were subjected to some form of torture, while another nurse added: “We don’t treat animals that way in a vet’s office, so why in the hospital?”

RCN general secretary Prof Nicola Ranger said the testimonies showed the “devastating humanitarian consequences” of the crackdown on hospitals.

He was speaking after the announcement of a number of hospitals critical events in the first two weeks of the new year.

Managers at Nottingham University Hospital warned of patients in corridors and apologized for “significant and unacceptable delays” at A&E.

The BBC has seen the impact of the crackdown first hand. This month our crews filmed at Leicester Royal Infirmary, where staff described the “relentless pressure” and the daily challenges of “maintaining the patient’s dignity while in the corridor”.

Doctors and nurses told the BBC they were struggling to find beds for some of the hospital’s most vulnerable patients, with elderly people often left to wait eight or nine hours in plastic chairs overnight.

Among them was Patricia, a woman in her seventies who fell and suffered severe chest pain. He spent nine hours waiting in a chair.

He said he felt “very tired” and “confused about what was going on.”

Another patient, Ann, arrived by ambulance and was being treated for infection and dehydration. He had been waiting 48 hours to get a bed in a ward.

Although he praised the care he received, specialist staff would need to come to the emergency department to oversee his rehabilitation as there were no beds available.

“This is not the level of care we want to provide,” emergency room consultant Scott Knapp said.

“We’ll do the best we can for him, but it puts extra pressure on the system and on the nursing team in the emergency room.”

But the trust did not have to declare a critical incident and said patients needing urgent care should still come forward.

Monthly data on 12-hour waits is published by NHS England. In 2024, 10.5% of patients waited 12 hours or more in large ED units before reaching the point where they were treated and discharged, or found a bed on a ward if they had to be admitted. In 2025, this rate was 10.1%.

Waiting times are measured slightly differently elsewhere in the UK, but problems occur in other countries too.

Dr Ian Higginson, of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said the pressures seen were “causing enormous harm to patients”.

“They are forced to endure these conditions for hours, if not days, because hospitals are about to burst.”

This week the Liberal Democrats proposed giving patients the legal right to be admitted or treated and discharged within 12 hours to help end what they described as a “deadly corridor care crisis”.

Figures on the waiting list for planned hospital treatments such as knee and hip surgeries have also been published.

At the end of November, the number of patients on the waiting list fell to 7.31 million, from 7.4 million in the previous month, the lowest since February 2023.

And NHS England has published an evaluation of its support program for areas with the highest economic inactivity.

NHS trusts in the 20 areas with the highest unemployment were given extra support by sending specialist teams of doctors and managers to reduce the waiting list.

Last year the waiting list decreased by 4.2%, three times faster than elsewhere.