Waiting lists up at Nottingham University Hospitals Trust

In January 2023 Prime Minister Rishi Sunak made five pledges to the British public – including a promise that "NHS waiting lists will fall and people will get the care they need more quickly".

With figures now available for this January, the PM has failed to cut waiting lists at Nottingham University Hospitals Trust, and across England.

NHS England figures show 84,280 patients were waiting for non-urgent elective operations or treatment at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust at the end of January – down from 86,151 in December, but an increase on 78,835 in January 2023.

Of those, 3,124 (four per cent) had been waiting for longer than a year.

The median waiting time from referral at an NHS Trust to treatment at Nottingham University Hospitals Trust was 16 weeks at the end of January – up from 14 weeks in January 2023.

In better news for the PM, January saw the fourth consecutive month-on-month fall across England, although 250,000 more patients were waiting than in January last year. Nationally, 6.32 million patients were waiting for 7.58 million treatments at the end of January.

Mr Sunak admitted to failing to keep this pledge in an interview with TalkTV in February.

However, this week Health Secretary Victoria Atkins said the Government’s "commitment to cutting waiting times is unwavering".

She added: "This has been achieved despite disruptive strikes and record winter pressures on our NHS services."

Separate figures show 1.6 million patients in England were waiting for a key diagnostic test in January – the same as in December.

At Nottingham University Hospitals Trust, 18,006 patients were waiting for one of 13 standard tests, such as an MRI scan, non-obstetric ultrasound or gastroscopy at this time.

Of them, 6,923 (38 per cent) had been waiting for at least six weeks.

Professor Sir Stephen Powis, NHS national medical director, said "demand for NHS services across the country remains high".

He said: "It is testament to the hard work of staff and the measures in our elective recovery plan that despite the longest period of industrial action in NHS history in January, with one in five days affected, staff still managed to bring the waiting list down."