Today I am updating the House on the publication of our NHS urgent and emergency care plan for 2025-26. This plan sets out the key actions and milestones across 2025 and 2026 that will support the NHS across England to improve the timeliness and delivery of care to patients requiring urgent and emergency care.
The most recent winter clearly showed that, despite the hard work and compassion shown by NHS staff up and down the country, patients did not receive the standard of care we all expect.
Every day, more than 140,000 people access urgent and emergency care services across England. Since 2010-11, demand has almost doubled, with ambulance service usage rising by 61%.
A&E waiting time standards have not been met for over a decade, while the 18-minute target for category 2 ambulance calls has never been hit outside the pandemic. We know that something has to change.
But we know that we cannot stand still. That is why we asked the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England to work together to develop an urgent and emergency care plan for 2025-26.
This delivery plan focuses on improvement activity in line with the current round of NHS operational planning guidance. It is vital that we have clear, shared objectives, which is why we have instructed the NHS to focus as a whole system on those improvements that will have the biggest impact. We will make sure that this winter is significantly better than recent winters by setting ambitious but achievable targets and increasing transparency about progress.
In hospitals, the plan will ensure at least 78% of patients who attend an A&E department are seen within four hours—more than 800,000 people receiving more timely care than last year. To support care settings, the plan confirms that we will allocate almost £450 million of capital investment, including for same day emergency care and mental health crisis assessment centres, ensuring that patients who would otherwise be unnecessarily admitted to hospital can be assessed, diagnosed and treated on the same day and then discharged without an overnight stay.
We know that at least one in five people who attend A&E do not need urgent or emergency care, while an even larger number could be better cared for in the community. We will renew our focus on improving vaccine uptake, making it easier than ever to access vaccination appointments closer to home. We will also improve vaccination rates among health staff to prevent them from getting flu—reducing the number of sick days and ensuring that staff are well and able to care for patients across the busy winter period.
We will continue to invest in data and digital tools to speed up and improve patient care, ensuring that paramedics across the country can access patient records on the move, enabling them to provide better care and avoid unnecessary admissions.
These measures mark a fundamental shift in our approach to urgent and emergency care—moving from fragmented efforts to genuine collaboration across the whole system—and mean better co-ordination between NHS trusts and primary care to identify patients who are most vulnerable during winter.
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