Wes Streeting claims he hit his NHS targets - this says otherwise

"I am pleased to report that I have delivered against the ambitious targets you set for me when I became your secretary of state for health and social care."

That's what outgoing health secretary Wes Streeting said in his resignation letter to Sir Keir Starmer.

While it's true that some targets have been met, several milestones due to be achieved by March, including on A&E and cancer treatment waiting times, have not.

Waiting times

The NHS constitution states that 92% of people should be treated within 18 weeks of being referred for treatment. This target hasn't been achieved in over a decade and deteriorated rapidly during the pandemic, when fewer than half of patients were treated within 18 weeks.

Labour promised to get back to the 92% standard by the end of parliament but, in the meantime, set a target to reach 65% by March 2026.

New figures show this was achieved at the national level, but nearly half of trusts (71 of 150) did not.

"It means we are right on track to deliver the fastest reduction in waiting times in the history of the NHS," Streeting said.

Performance improved from 62.6% in February to 65.3% in March to reach the target threshold. There is still some way to go to reach the full 92% target by 2029, however.

Data validation exercises?

The number of appointments on the waiting list fell to 7.11 million in March, a reduction of 1.5% from 7.22 million in February. This was the largest month-on-month reduction outside of the pandemic since 2008.

It may have been helped in part by a surge in "validation" exercises to remove cases that should no longer be on the waiting list, even if the patient has not received NHS care.

Some 17.1% of appointments removed from the waiting list were from this "unreported removal" category, the highest share of administrative removals since February 2024.

Francesca Cavallaro, senior analytical manager at the Health Foundation, told Sky News that meeting the interim waiting times target was an "important milestone", given the scale of the challenge facing the NHS.

"However, this is only one step on the road to recovery towards restoring the 18-week standard after more than a decade of missed targets," she said.

"The levels of unreported waiting list removals in March reflect a relatively high share of total removals, though similar to levels seen before the COVID-19 pandemic. This is likely to be partly down to additional validation work being undertaken ahead of the interim targets, raising the broader question of whether the recent pace of improvement is sustainable in the months ahead."

Not finished the job

Other achievements name-checked by the outgoing health secretary include recruiting 2,000 GPs and an improvement in public satisfaction with the NHS, which has risen from 60% to 74.5% since Labour came into office.

He said improvements were down to "investment, modernisation, and the remarkable efforts of staff", though he acknowledged there is "lots more to do".

Uneven performance

While the national waiting times target was met overall, another target was that every trust should have reached a minimum of 60% patients treated within 18 weeks and have improved by five percentage points from a November 2024 baseline, and this was not achieved.

Sixty-eight of 150 trusts did not meet this level of improvement, including in 16 trusts where neither target was achieved.

Additionally, 17 trusts are performing worse now than they were in November 2024.

Search for your trust in the table below.

A&E waiting time targets missed

Reducing waits for emergency care has been a big priority for Streeting's NHS, but while interim targets have been met for planned hospital treatment, they have been missed in A&E.

In March, 76.9% of A&E patients were treated or discharged within four hours, missing the interim target that this should be 78%.

In major departments, just 63.8% of patients were seen within four hours.

The long-term target is that 95% of patients should be seen within the four-hour standard.

Trolley waits worsen

Meanwhile, the situation with "trolley waits", the time patients spend waiting for a hospital bed after a decision to admit, has continued to deteriorate.

This April was the worst April on record for long trolley waits of 12 hours or more, experienced by nearly one in 10 patients after a decision was made to admit them.

2025 was the worst year on record for trolley waits of 12 or more hours, at 554,000. That was more than the total recorded between 2011 and 2022.

Cancer treatment target missed

The latest figures show that 79.4% of cancer patients were diagnosed within four weeks in March - just shy of the interim target to reach 80%.

The time taken for treatment has shown little improvement, however, with just 72.8% of cancer patients treated within two months of urgent referral as of March, missing the target to reach 75% by this point in time.

And while this is the best performance of available data going back to 2022, it remains far from the ultimate target that 85% should be treated within a two-month time frame.

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

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