Failure to plan, and failure to act, is to blame for the ongoing crisis in English Emergency Departments, not events like the World Cup or hot weather.

That’s the key message today from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, following the latest ED performance figures from NHS England, covering June 2026.

They showed that almost one in 10 (9.7%) patients who arrived at a major ED that month waited 12 or more hours.

That’s 149,013 people who have endured an A&E wait of more than half a day.

Meanwhile, 49,466 patients who were deemed to need a hospital bed waited on trolleys for more than 12 hours after being marked for admission – the worst June on record.

Dr Ian Higginson, RCEM President, said: “We have long said that the notion of the annual winter crisis in our EDs is becoming outdated given that we face a year-round crisis, which gets worse in winter.

“Instead, our members are battling in summers, with pressures the likes of which were unheard of even in the depths of winter a decade ago.

“Many of the patients behind these statistics – the humans at the heart of what we do – have come to us on the worst day of their life. We are failing them.”

Today’s figures showed that there was a higher than normal number of patients attending ED than would be expected in June, at 1,488,602 – the highest for any June on record.

Over a ten-year period, 12-hour waits have increased by more than 10 times. Meanwhile, attendances have grown by only 16% since 2016. Heatwaves relating to the climate crisis, and sporting events, do contribute to additional attendances. But this shouldn’t be a surprise.

Driving this total breakdown in hospital flow is exit block: the lack of availability of beds for our patients.

Last month, there was a daily average of 13,618 hospital beds occupied by patients who were medically fit to leave – 1,547 more than June last year.

Dr Higginson said: “Much has been made of the additional pressure put on the health service this summer. But heatwaves, football – these are things we knew were coming.

“These predictable events, on top of predictable increases in demand which are part of underlying trends, are what the systems should plan for, invest for, and be able to cope with.

“We cannot allow them to become the recurring excuse for a failure to grasp the problems at the core of this crisis: exit block and hospital flow.

“These issues are showing up in the form of corridor care with an average of 2,432 patients reportedly experiencing it each day last month, a figure which is likely an underestimate given flaws in the definition and the way data is being reported.

“Until the government puts sufficient resource, and effort, into our EDs, into getting hospitals working effectively, and into tackling delayed discharges and improving bed capacity, we will see more long stays and, ultimately, more patients suffering and dying as a result.”

The release of these figures follows a House of Commons debate, led by Dr Rosena Allin-Khan yesterday (8 July), on corridor care in which MPs from across the political spectrum spoke in support of greater measures to tackle this issue.

The stats also showed that:

Fewer than two-thirds of patients were discharged, admitted or transferred within four hours of arrival at a major ED. The NHS constitutional target is 95%

Bed occupancy was, on average, above 93.3% throughout June