A new Care Plan is set to improve urgent and emergency care, as the number of A&E attendances dealt within 4 hours increased by 2.9% in April 2025.
On Friday, the UK Government and NHS England published a new Urgent and Emergency Care Plan aimed at meeting the following by the end of the 2025/26 financial year:
- Reducing ambulance waiting times.
- Achieving a 45 minute standard for ambulance handovers.
- Ensuring 78% of A&E patients are dealt within four hours.
- Increase the number of children seen within four hours.
- Reducing discharge times.
This comes after NHS data revealed that in April 2025, there were 2.3 million A&E attendances in England, a 2.5% increase from the previous year. Whilst attendance at Type 1 A&E increased by 1.2%, Type 3 attendances increased by 5%.
A Type 1 A&E department is a 24 hour service equipped to treat accident and emergency patients, whilst a Type 3 A&E department is a GP led Urgent Treatment Centre, open at least 12 hours a day and equipped to treat minor injuries and illnesses.
The number of attendances admitted, transferred or discharged within 4 hours was 1.7 million, an increase of 2.9% from April 2024.
Regarding emergency admissions, there were 529k admissions over the month, a decrease of 2.7% from the previous year. This was driven by a decrease in emergency admissions via Type 1 A&E departments.
Polimapper has visualised April’s A&E Attendances and Emergency Admissions figures by Integrated Care Board. The visualisation reveals local disparities in A&E waiting times and shows cross-country trends.
The NHS Kent and Medway Integrated Care Board registered the highest percentage of attendances resolved within 4 hours, at 81%. The Care Board saw a total of 92.3k attendances in April.
Conversely, the ICB of Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin registered the lowest rate of resolved attendances in 4 hours, at 57%, with 16k attendances over the month.
Additionally, the NHS North East and North Cumbria ICB saw the highest number of emergency admissions via A&E, at over 25k admissions. Explore statistics in your area below.
About this map
The visualisation below shows A&E Attendances and Emergency Admissions statistics from the NHS England. The data refers to April 2025 and is by Integrated Care Board.
To view figures in your area double click on the map or click here to access the full page version.
Geodata context
The government’s new care plan has been welcomed by organisations, despite some considering the plan “low on detail”.
Professor Nicola Ranger, general secretary and chief executive at Royal College of Nursing: “This is a plan high in ambition, but low on detail of how the nursing staff needed to make this work will be supported to deliver these changes. Investment in new treatment and assessment centres, reducing the need for admission to hospital and speeding up discharge are desperately needed, but none of this can be achieved unless there is a commitment to invest in an overworked and understaffed nursing workforce.
“Those in government must recognise that their plans will also require investment in the nursing staff to deliver them. Failure to act will simply be adding even greater pressures to a profession that is already on the brink and the plans will fail before they have even begun.”
“The commitment in England to publish data on long waits and the prevalence of corridor care is the right thing to do. We now need to see investment put where it is needed most to relieve pressures and end corridor care across the NHS.”
Professor Steve Turner, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health: “Children suffer when paediatric emergency care is rapidly overwhelmed during peak periods. New commitments to ensure more children are seen within 4 hours are vital. As are those to boost vaccination and improve online information for worried families.”
“As a paediatrician, I’m encouraged to see that this plan prioritises children’s health services — too often, when children and their health services are not explicitly mentioned in plans, policies, or strategies, they are forgotten entirely. We hope the forthcoming Spending Review continues this welcome trend by committing to fair funding for our overstretched child health services. Looking to the NHS 10 Year Plan and beyond, we must see detailed plans to support the child health workforce to deliver the ambitious service transformation that’s required to care for the next generation.”