NHS Activity Tracker: August 2025

On the second Thursday of the month, NHS England publish data relating to demand, activity, waiting times and national performance against constitutional standards and recovery targets across the secondary care sector. Each month, we'll take a more detailed look at national and trust level data across the acute, ambulance, community and mental health sectors.

Key points

• A&E:  Record high July A&E attendances at 2.41 million and second busiest month overall. Performance against the 4-hour target was the strongest since August 2021, standing at 76.4%. While 12-hour waits have been gradually decreasing, they remain at elevated levels.
  
  
• Ambulance: Category 2 response times met the 30-minute target for the fifth consecutive month, while category 1 response times moved slightly further away from the 7-minute standard. Mean handover times improved to the fastest time in nearly two years.
   
• Cancer: Activity across all pathways increased compared to last month and last year. Highest June performance for the 28 FDS pathway (76.8%).
   
• Diagnostics: Despite the highest June figure on record for diagnostic activity, but the diagnostic waiting list has reached a record high and is now over 60% larger than in 2019.
   
• Elective waiting list:  The size of the waiting list increased slightly (+10,000) to 7.37 million cases in June. There are 3% fewer cases and 2% fewer patients waiting than last year.  Highest proportion of cases waiting less than 18 weeks for treatment since June 2022.
   
• Community: The community health services waiting list reached a record high 1.18 million in June 2025. Long waits of over 52 weeks for CYP’s community services continue to rise – nearly double last year.
   
• Mental health: demand measures at record highs - the total number of people in contact with services rose to a record 2.16 million in June. New referrals to mental health services were the second highest recorded.