NHS A&E Waiting Times Fall to Five-Year Low Despite Record 2.43 Million Attendances
NHS England published March 2026 performance data showing that accident and emergency waiting times had fallen to their lowest level in five years, even as the health service recorded the highest ever monthly volume of A&E attendances. The combination of record demand and improving performance was hailed by NHS England as evidence that the investment and operational changes introduced over the past eighteen months were producing tangible results.
March saw 2.43 million total A&E attendances across England — exceeding the previous record set in May 2024 by approximately 16,000 — in what NHS England described as a prolonged winter period that had placed sustained pressure on emergency departments, ambulance services and the GP practices that serve as first points of contact for patients in distress.
Despite the extraordinary volume, the proportion of patients seen within four hours — the key waiting time standard — improved compared to the same month in 2025. The improvement reflected changes in patient flow management, increased use of same-day emergency care units to divert patients away from traditional emergency departments, and improvements in discharge processes that had historically contributed to ambulance delays and corridor waits.
Sir James Mackey, Chief Executive of NHS England, said the March figures demonstrated what could be achieved when investment was combined with operational focus, but cautioned that performance remained below the ambitions set out in the NHS medium-term planning framework. The target of 78 percent of patients being seen within four hours — itself a relaxation of the pre-pandemic standard of 95 percent — had not yet been sustainably met.
The ceasefire in the Iran conflict raised some concern among NHS financial planners about the implications of elevated energy costs for hospital trust budgets in 2026/27, with some trusts warning that their financial plans had not accounted for the potential scale of the increase.
