The Longest Wait: Our A&E crisis demands an emergency response (Age UK, 31 October 2025)

Summary

10 years ago, waiting 12 hours in A&E was a rarity. Now long waits are routine, happening during 1 in 10 major A&E attendances. In this report, the charity Age UK sets out the devastating impact that corridor care and long accident and emergency waits can have on older people. They argue that this is a crisis hiding in plain sight in our hospitals and that the Government need to act urgently to tackle this.

You can find further articles and reports on the patient safety issues surrounding corridor care here.

Content

The report highlights that:

• 1 in 3 (one third or 32%) of those aged 90 and older are waiting 12 hours or more in A&E to be admitted or discharged home in 2024/25.
• The number of instances of ‘corridor care’ of 12 hours or more has increased 525-fold since 2015/16.
• Between 2019/20 and 2024/25 the number of attendances to A&E that resulted in a 12-hour wait for a bed increased by nearly 2000%.
• Last year, 532,451 people experienced corridor care of 12 hours or more.

It calls for the Government to implement the following package of measures:

• Urgently produce a funded operational plan to reduce the number of long A&E waits and end Corridor Care, with specific deadlines and milestones.
• Establish a robust system to collect and publish regular data on Corridor Care (as well as long A&E waits), and their impacts on the public, including by age and ethnicity.
• Make a Minister in the Department of Health and Social Care accountable for reducing long A&E waits and ending corridor care and require them to report on progress to Parliament every six months.
• Turbo-charge a peer learning programme for hospitals and local health organisations (Integrated Care Boards) to share proven solutions, tackle barriers to discharge and protect and support NHS staff.
• Work at pace to implement the 10 Year Health Plan, especially the ‘hospital to home’ shift and creation of a Neighbourhood Health Service, ensuring social care and the VCSE (Voluntary Community and Social Enterprise) are fully involved – so fewer older people need to go to A&E in the first place.