The elective waiting list: behind the headline figures (The Health Foundation, 1 August 2025)

Summary

New analysis reveals stark inequalities in elective care waits, highlighting deprivation, ethnicity and digital exclusion as key barriers to equitable recovery.

Content

Few health and care statistics come under as much scrutiny as the size of the elective care waiting list. After more than a decade of growth, including a staggeringly sharp increase during the COVID-19 pandemic, the current government has pledged to reduce the size of the waiting list and bring 92% of elective care waits down below 18 weeks. While this standard has not been met since 2015, recent months have seen some progress towards this goal.

Despite this pledge being a major national priority, until recently, analyses of the waiting list have tended to be confined to the headline figures. We know how many people are waiting and for how long. But less clear is who waits longest and what happens to people while they wait.

New evidence has begun to fill these gaps. NHS England’s recent breakdown of waiting times by demographic characteristics found that people from the most deprived areas and people with Asian or Asian British backgrounds are more likely to wait for longer than 18 weeks than any other groups.

The briefing from the Health Foundation’s Networked Data Lab (NDL) takes a more detailed look at the experiences of people on the waiting list. Using linked local data from four areas of the UK, it explores how long different population groups wait for elective care, how people use health care during their wait and why they leave the waiting list.