Responding to the publication of the elective recovery plan for the NHS in England, the deputy chief executive of NHS Providers, Saffron Cordery said:

"The publication of this plan, which trust leaders helped create, is important for the NHS as it ramps up efforts to tackle the substantial and growing care backlog.

"Trust leaders are acutely aware of the disruption and distress patients continue to face because of delays to their treatment, which have been worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic.

"This plan focuses on planned hospital 'elective' treatment, but we know there are also very worrying delays for mental health treatment, and for community services. The NHS must be supported and resourced to address these backlogs too.

"That nearly 6 million people are on the elective waiting list weighs heavy on the shoulders of those running the NHS. Health inequalities and poorer outcomes for vulnerable groups, including children and young people, have worsened during the COVID-19. Tackling this will be a key priority for trusts in the months and years ahead as they work to bear down on the backlogs.

"Today's announcement, which sets out a significant expansion in the NHS' capacity to deliver tests, checks and treatments, will help trusts bear down on care backlogs as quickly as possible. The inclusion of a series of very stretching targets, which will sit alongside existing clinical standards for urgent and emergency care, mental health, cancer and planned care, bring renewed focus to a range of services.

"These measures will build upon the great efforts made by trusts and their frontline teams in recent months to restore activity up to, and sometimes beyond, pre-pandemic levels.

"Trust leaders will be going flat out to meet the challenges presented by long waits but we need to have the staff in place to achieve all of these ambitions. Workforce shortages and the resulting unsustainable workloads on existing staff, are the biggest challenges facing trusts right now. We need urgent national action to tackle this.

"And there can be no end to NHS delays without a sustainable workforce and funding solution for social care. This is not being addressed with anything like the urgency it demands."