Local Health Trust's Waiting List Rises by Nearly 10,000
Ruth Cadbury describes increase over last year as 'unacceptable'
Ruth Cadbury on a visit to West Middlesex Hospital
September 29, 2023
The latest official figures on waiting lists at local hospitals have shown that there has been a further increase over the last year.
For the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, which runs West Middlesex Hospital, the number of people waiting for treatment has risen from 48,548 to over 58,135 over the year to July.
Of those waiting, a total of 1,761 have been waiting longer than a year despite the NHS target for patients being to wait no longer than 18 weeks for hospital treatment. 39% of patients on waiting lists locally are waiting longer than that.
The number of people waiting for treatment across England has increased every single month since Rishi Sunak pledged to cut NHS waiting lists. Since he became Prime Minister, waiting lists have grown by 724,000 patients, to over 7 million.
Brentford and Isleworth MP Ruth Cadbury MP said, “It’s simply unacceptable that record numbers of patients locally are waiting for treatment. I’ve heard of people locally having to wait far too long for cancer care and others waiting for treatments or operations that would enable them to return to work. So many people are being left in pain and agony because of the long wait for care. For millions of patients across England, the NHS is no longer there for them when they need it.
‘‘This is not the fault of our hard-working NHS staff who work tirelessly to keep people safe. These huge backlogs are solely the fault of Rishi Sunak and the incompetence that we have seen over the past 13 years from successive Governments.’’
‘‘The Prime Minister remains out of touch about the scale of the crisis in the NHS and is leaving patients waiting for care.
‘‘I will continue to campaign for the Government to tackle this backlog by recruiting over 10,000 new doctors and nurses, and by supporting existing NHS frontline staff.’’
In response to the publication of these figures, the Prime Minister said that his aim to reduce waiting lists had been made more difficult by industrial action by doctors although he admitted that the data was ‘disappointing’.
He said, "Industrial action is a significant cause of that. We were making very good progress before industrial action.
"With industrial action, it's very hard to continue to meet these targets.
"The evidence for that is before industrial action really intensified we had actually met our interim target of virtually eliminating the number of people who were waiting a year and a half.”
We have asked the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation for comment.
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