A&E alert as medics warn ‘this winter we will see NHS gridlock’
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine has found almost one in five A&E patients were being treated in inappropriate spaces as NHS ‘corridor care’ crisis continues to get worse
Almost one in five A&E patients in Britain are now being cared for in corridors and inappropriate spaces as experts fear a “gridlock” this winter.
The first NHS analysis of its kind has revealed 17.7% of patients were receiving care in “escalation areas” – such as corridors, waiting rooms, doubled-up cubicles and ambulances waiting outside to offload for more than 15 minutes. The Mirror has reported on how corridor care was quietly normalised by NHS England from 2022 and Health Secretary Wes Streeting last week vowed to end the practice by the next general election.
The new study, carried out by Royal College of Emergency Medicine’s (RCEM), analysed five snapshots taken from 165 A&E departments in March 2025 and covered more than 10,000 patients.
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Dr Ian Higginson, president of the RCEM, said the study “reinforces that the shameful practice of corridor care is endemic in emergency departments in the UK”. He added “Just this week one of our members told us of a patient having to wait two days for a bed in their department.
“It’s important to note that these patients may be elderly, vulnerable, have mental health issues or be children. They have been failed by successive governments. We are very concerned about the harm associated with long waits in emergency departments and how it puts patients’ lives at risk – for every 72 patients who wait between eight and 12 hours before admission, there is one excess death. This should not be happening in a wealthy country.”
A decade-long NHS funding squeeze under the Tories saw NHS waits surge from 2015 onwards. The Covid pandemic then saw 999 delays increase to dangerous levels as ambulances queued outside full A&Es waiting to offload patients.
Caring for patients on trolleys in “temporary escalation spaces” such as corridors and store cupboards had previously been an emergency measure, lasting maybe 24, 48 or 72 hours. That was before NHS England made the difficult decision in 2022 to normalise such escalation spaces to get ambulances back on the road.
Dr Higginson said the study, published in the Emergency Medicine Journal, was “worrying” given that such corridor care was reported in March – given the situation is now likely to be much worse in winter. He said: “This shows that corridor care is an issue all year round. It can’t be blamed on hiccups or flu. We fear this winter we will see gridlock.”
The Mirror previously reported how mental health patient Emma Powell was left on a beanbag in A&E for 24 hours while going through a crisis. The 33-year-old needed hospitalisation when she experienced psychosis in 2022. She told how she went to A&E but staff could not find her a space in a mental health unit even though her condition was so serious she needed to be monitored 1:1 by a nurse.
An A&E nurse found her a beanbag and Emma curled up on it in the corridor while she waited for more than 24 hours. She said: “I was literally lying on the floor curled up with people walking past me, as I was so exhausted and it was the closest I could get to comfort. To be in a small space surrounded by noise with people rushing around and people in pain, exacerbated my distress.”
During another crisis last year, Emma was forced to stay on a trolley in an A&E side room for six nights while waiting for a mental health bed. She said: “Being in A&E is never going to be a pleasant experience, but it’s particularly terrifying when you can’t control things happening in your mind and you’re distressed and in a strange space that isn’t designed for those kinds of feelings.”
Emma said the A&E staff recognised that the conditions were “awful”, adding: “They were just rushed off their feet, but always caring and desperate to be able to do something more.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “Corridor care is unacceptable, undignified, and has no place in our NHS.“That is why we will be publishing corridor waiting figures for the first time, so we can take the steps needed to eradicate it from our health service. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. It will take time to turn around the shocking situation we inherited, but we are already seeing green shoots of recovery, with ambulances arriving 10 minutes faster to stroke and heart attack patients than last year and handovers also almost 10 minutes quicker.”
An NHS England spokesperson said: “We know that too many patients are being cared for in corridors, and this should never happen.“NHS teams have been working hard to limit this unacceptable way of caring for patients, while doing more to prepare for winter earlier than ever before. Our focus is firmly on getting patients out of corridors, keeping more ambulances on the road and enabling people who are ready to leave hospital to do so as quickly and safely as possible.”
