NHS 2025/26 Planning Guidance published: What are the priorities?

By Sophie Bullimore | Published: 30-Jan-2025

NHS England has outlined the priorities for the NHS over the next year, in its 2025/26 priorities and operational planning guidance. The document highlighting waiting times, as well as patient flow and access, as priorities

The NHS has just released it 2025/26 priorities and operational planning guidance.

This document is the annual guidance provided by NHS England to its various organisations, outlining priorities, targets, and financial allocations for the upcoming year.

The yearly document sets out the strategic direction, key priorities, and performance expectations for NHS trusts and commissioners. This helps in aligning resources and efforts across the NHS to meet the needs of the population.

The 2024/25 guidance has four main priorities:

  • Reduce the time people wait 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. Systems are expected to continue to improve performance against the cancer 62-day and 28-day Faster Diagnosis Standard (FDS) to 75% and 80% respectively by March 2026
  • 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. Category 2 ambulance response times should average no more than 30 minutes across 2025/26
  • Improve patients’ access to general practice, improving patient experience, and improve access to urgent dental care, providing 700,000 additional urgent dental appointments
  • 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 (CYP) mental health services, to achieve the national ambition for 345,000 additional CYP aged 0 to 25 compared to 2019

The review emphasised the need to meet these objectives while staying within budget and broke down steps and processes that are being taken to try and achieve them.

The review also emphasised the need for a shift towards preventative care and digital workflows, as well as local prioritisation and planning to improve the service.

The NHS making changes

NHS England also came out with their new timeline for the New Hospital Programme in the last few weeks following a review​​​​. This document outlines the new "waves" system.

 

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