Health Services: Standards
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many NHS trusts met the referral-to-treatment standard in each month since July 2024.
Answered by Karin Smyth
Our Elective Reform Plan, published in January 2025, set out the ambition to meet the National Health Service constitutional standard that 92% of patients should wait no longer than 18 weeks from Referral to Treatment (RTT) by March 2029. A number of NHS trusts are already meeting this standard.
Thanks to the effort of our hardworking NHS staff, we have achieved our in-year national ambition that by March 2026 65% of patients would wait no longer than 18 weeks for treatment. As at the end of March 2026, 65.3% of patients were waiting within 18 weeks, an improvement of 6.4% since the start of July 2024. The following table shows the number of acute trusts in England that met the RTT constitutional standard of 92% in each month from July 2024 onwards:
Month | Number of acute trusts above 92% RTT Target |
July 2024 | 15 |
August 2024 | 15 |
September 2024 | 15 |
October 2024 | 15 |
November 2024 | 16 |
December 2024 | 16 |
January 2025 | 15 |
February 2025 | 15 |
March 2025 | 15 |
April 2025 | 15 |
May 2025 | 15 |
June 2025 | 16 |
July 2025 | 15 |
August 2025 | 13 |
September 2025 | 14 |
October 2025 | 14 |
November 2025 | 13 |
December 2025 | 14 |
January 2026 | 15 |
February 2026 | 14 |
March 2026 | 14 |
Source: Consultant-led Referral to Treatment Waiting Times Data 2025/26, NHS England.
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