Two years down, three to go: is progress on waiting times stalling? (The Health Foundation, 8 October 2026)

Summary

The government is committed to bringing down waiting times for elective care in England, aiming to achieve 92% of waits within 18 weeks by the end of the current parliament (at the latest in July 2029).

In September 2025, The Health Foundation projected that – based on trends over Labour’s first year in power – 92% of waits would last up to 20.3 weeks by July 2029, falling just short of the headline pledge. 

This analysis shows that, over the 12 months to July 2026, the percentage of waits within 18 weeks improved from 61.3% to 65.4%. The waiting list also fell by 62,000 to 7.33 million, and the share of waits longer than 52 weeks improved from 2.6% to 1.5%.

Content

Key points:

• Removals from the waiting list need to exceed referrals onto it to make meaningful progress on reducing waiting times. Between July 2024 and July 2026, both referrals and removals grew at a similar rate of 2.3% per year – with referrals rising to 21.73 million, and removals rising to 21.79 million. However, the referral growth rate doubled in the second year, from 1.5% in the year to July 2025 to 3.0% in the next year.

• Based on the trend between July 2024 and July 2026, it is now projected that removals will outnumber referrals by a smaller margin than projected in the previous analysis. 

• If referrals and removals continue to grow at the same rate as they have over the past 2 years, it is projected that by July 2029 the waiting list will have fallen slightly to 7.11 million (from 7.33 million currently) and 92% of waits will be within 34.9 weeks, rather than 18 weeks. While there is time for new initiatives to speed up progress, on current trends the government’s target would be missed by a considerable margin.