
NHS England’s 2025/26 priorities are:
- To reduce the time people spend waiting for elective care, improving the percentage of patients waiting no longer than 18 weeks for elective treatment to 65% nationally by March 2026, with every trust expected to deliver a minimum 5%-point improvement.
- To improve A&E waiting times and ambulance response times compared to 2024/25, with a minimum of 78% of patients seen within 4 hours in March 2026.
- To improve patients’ access to general practice, improving patient experience, and improve access to urgent dental care, providing 700,000 additional urgent dental appointments
- To improve patient flow through mental health crisis and acute pathways, reducing average length of stay in adult acute beds, and improve access to children and young people’s mental health services, to achieve the national ambition for 345,000 additional children and young people aged 0 to 25 compared to 2019.
RCPCH Officer for Health Services, Dr Ronny Cheung, said:
We know from experience that when children are not specifically mentioned in policy and funding plans, they are often forgotten about completely. As such we are pleased that NHSE is requesting ICBs to explicitly reflect the needs of children and young people in their local planning and funding allocations.
Over the past few years, we have been increasingly concerned that children and young people are not visible enough within our healthcare system. As a result, we have seen massive disparities between waiting times for children and adults. This situation is becoming exacerbated by the deteriorating health profile of our young people, as outlined in the Darzi Review.
Much more work is needed to solve the current crisis in child health. We must ensure that the inclusion of children in plans is not simply a tokenistic measure. We urgently need to see Integrated Care Systems prioritise and deliver the investment and resources needed to protect the health, wellbeing and future of our young people.