Welsh NHS cuts longest waits yet tens of thousands endure years without treatment

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Wales’ health system is facing one of its greatest challenges in modern times as waiting lists for NHS treatment remain at record highs, despite recent improvements.
Health Minister Jeremy Miles has expressed satisfaction with the latest figures, noting a significant fall in the longest waits and a reduction in the overall size of the waiting list for the third consecutive month.
“We still have more work to do to reach our ambitious targets, but it is encouraging to see waiting times consistently falling.
Two-year waits have fallen to their lowest levels since June 2021 and were more than 26% lower compared to the previous month,” he stated.
However, political opponents argue that the Welsh Government is still on course to miss its own targets, with nearly 16,000 patients waiting more than two years for treatment, double the amount the government aimed to reduce by this point.
The latest data reveals that while the number of people waiting over a year for their first outpatient appointment has dropped for three months in a row, and performance on diagnostic and therapy services has improved, urgent and emergency care services remain under intense pressure.
In March, the proportion of patients seen within four hours in emergency departments increased to 66.9%, but this still falls short of the 95% target, and ambulance services saw a 9% rise in life-threatening calls, with only half being met within the eight-minute target response time.
Welsh Conservative health spokesman James Evans MS criticized the government’s progress, stating, “Labour Ministers will try to claim success today, but these statistics are worse than a mixed bag.
The reduction in two-year waits is welcome, but the fact that they still exist at all, when they haven’t for so many months in England, coupled with worsening ambulance response times, is a testament to Labour’s failure to meet their targets.” Plaid Cymru’s health spokesman Mabon ap Gwynfor MS added, “On their own targets, the Welsh Labour Government are falling woefully short.
Last year, the First Minister said she’d bring down two year waits down to 8,000 by spring 2025 – these figures show 15,500 pathways still on waiting lists, near enough double the amount they said they’d bring them down to by now and let’s not forget that the original target set in the planned care recovery plan was to eliminate these waits entirely by March 2023.”
The problem is compounded by the fact that waiting lists in Wales have grown by over 50% since March 2020, with more than 735,000 open patient pathways as of late 2022, equating to approximately one in five people in Wales, though some individuals are counted more than once due to multiple referrals.
The average wait time for treatment has more than doubled since before the pandemic, now standing at 22 weeks compared to 10 weeks previously.
The Welsh Government has committed over £1 billion this Senedd term to help the NHS recover, including an extra £15 million annually for the next four years, and has set ambitious targets such as ensuring no one waits longer than 12 months for treatment in most specialties by spring 2025, but experts and patient groups continue to warn that the scale of the backlog will require unprecedented transformation and sustained investment to deliver meaningful change.