The hospitals where waiting times are getting worse. Is yours one of them?

According to BBC results, nearly a quarter of hospitals in England have seen waiting times have increased since the government announced its initiative to tackle the backlog a year ago. Labour's key manifesto pledge for the health service was hitting the 18-week waiting target for knee and hip surgeries, and last January it revealed how hospitals could be back to normalcy. Although national change is being made, 31 hospital trusts have fallen backwards, and another 17 have made no progress in the 129 services evaluated. The hospITals that were the most affected by a variety of challenges, including staffing shortages, physician strikes, and IT infrastructure issues.

'Living in pain'

Mary Waterhouse, 72, of Blackpool, is one of many people to have experienced delays at a hospital where waits are getting worse. She has arthritis and has been receiving medical assistance from Blackpool Hospitals NHS Trust since 2022. She was first given steroids, but she was sent back to the waiting list in late 2024 as her health worsened. She had to wait eight months to get tested, but by that time, her health had deteriorated so much she was told she'd need hip and knee replacements on both directions that she would need. She opted against treatment.

My arthritis was too advanced – and it was causing too many hospitalizations. I have decided to live with the pain. Since being first described, I had long lines at every stage. It's like being in a never-ending queue.

I now rely on a scooter to get around – I can only walk short distances with crutches. Conditions may have been more effective if I had been undergoing faster care. Mary's case, according to Deborah Alsina, Arthritis UK, was typical of the difficulties faced by thousands of people with arthritis. She said that timely care can be life-changing, but that there is no such thing as equitable access to healthcare. Blackpool said it could not comment on Mary's case, but chief executive Maggie Oldham said the waits were too long.

We know we are not where we should be, but we're already working hard alongside our partners to solve the problems we've been dealing with urgently.

The government has made improving waiting times its top priority for the NHS and has promised to return to the 18-week waiting time target in England by March 2029. It has not been met since 2015. The target is that 92% of patients will be seen in 18 weeks. For March 2026, an interim national target of 65% has been set. At the time when the government announced its plan in January, it was 59. Patients were waiting less than 18 weeks, but that has now increased to 61. 8%. The number of applicants has also decreased to 7. There are 31 million people on the lowest level since February 2023. However, local results show significant differences in results, despite dedicated funding being allocated to support NHS trusts, which have been given their own personal targets for improvement. The BBC was able to compare current results with those from 12 months ago at just two hospital trusts; however, data was not available for Sheffield and Barking, Havering, and Redbridge hospital trust trusts. Although the data was released in January, it lags a few months, but it shows the position at the end of November in both 2024 and 2025. East Cheshire has seen the biggest decline, going from 60 to 61. Patients aged less than 18 weeks to 51 percent are patients who have waited less than 48 weeks to be released. 2%. Barnsley saw a decline of nine percentage points, while Whittington Health and Epsom and St Helier NHS Trusts saw decreases of around five percentage points. A variety of factors were at play, according to NHS trusts. Epsom and St Helier cited the introduction of a new electronic patient record system, which disrupted services, while Barnsley said that staff shortages and a surge in cancer referrals that must be prioritized ahead of planned treatments had caused delays. Doctors' strike action was also blamed – the number of doctors walking out during industrial strikes has varying from location to location. Both Barnsley and Epsom and St Helier said they wanted to see improvement from their results. Out of the 98 people who had made strides in the last year, 17 had only increased by less than one percentage point. But some had seen big jumps. Five NHS trusts saw increases in between nine and ten percentage points, as well as Shrewsbury and Telford, one of the worst performers a year ago by 17.

'Stark differences'

The 18-week promise is limited to England, but hospitalization targets in other parts of the UK are still missing.

The NHS is not one homogenous body, but it is made up of hundreds of separate organisations, each with their own unique financial and operational challenges.

This means that treating care backlogs in some parts of the country will be more difficult than in others – particularly if there are persistent challenges such as high rates of local deprivation. According to Chris McCann, deputy chief executive of Patient Watchdog Healthwatch England, the findings revealed stark differences for patients based on where they live.

Those in charge of monitoring NHS trusts must pay close attention to companies that are not only failing, but actually deteriorating,

he said. The government had got the NHS back on the road to recovery, according to a Department of Health and Social Care spokeswoman, but there was still more to do. She said that investment was being made in new surgical hubs, evening, and weekend scanning, which would be helpful. Individual hospitals will be held accountable for their results, according to her, and individual hospitals will have to answer for their services. Get all the headlines you need to start the day with our flagship newsletter. Sign up here.