Health Services: Standards
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to increase the proportion of patients receiving treatment within 18 weeks of referral.
Answered by Karin Smyth
The Government is committed to returning by March 2029 to the National Health Service constitutional standard that 92% of patients wait no longer than 18 weeks from referral to consultant-led treatment (RTT).
As a first step in achieving this, we have delivered against the interim target that 65% of patients wait no longer than 18 weeks by March 2026. As of March 2026, the waiting list has reduced by over 515,000 since the Government came into office, and performance against the RTT standard has improved by 6.4%, reaching 65.3%. This is despite 37.2 million referrals onto the waiting list over the same period.
This progress has been made by delivering more appointments, investing in modernisation, reforming and simplifying pathways, increasing surgical and diagnostic capacity, and providing patients with faster and more convenient access to care.
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