Tackling the crisis of corridor care

Corridor care – the practice of providing care to hospital patients in corridors or other non-designated areas – has reached a crisis point.

But our new report and campaign, The Longest Wait, shows us that corridor care need not be an inevitability. There is much that can be done to improve things.

A decade ago, corridor care was relatively unheard of; now it is in danger of being normalised in some hospitals. Indeed, the scale of the problem has skyrocketed in recent years: Age UK analysis shows a shocking 525-fold increase in the number of instances of corridor care of 12 hours or more since 2015/16.

We know that corridor care also disproportionately impacts older people, who are forced to wait in totally unsuitable surroundings before transferring onto the ward they need. This includes waits in corridors, or re-purposed cupboards, but also in toilets – often on a trolley, or sometimes a hard chair.

One of the key issues is that these spaces lack the equipment available on a ward, potentially endangering the patient being treated. And without the privacy and comfort that a ward can offer, dignified healthcare also becomes difficult or impossible for staff to deliver. The situation is shocking and completely unacceptable. But not enough has happened in recent years to remedy this challenge – and not enough is currently planned to turn the curve and bring it to an end.

How is corridor care affecting older people and NHS staff?

Last year, 532,451 people experienced a wait of more than 12 hours between being admitted to hospital and getting a bed on a ward. And as the most recent performance data from NHS England reveals, in October 2025 alone, 54,314 people waited 12 hours or more after the decision to admit them to hospital was made.

But not every age group is affected equally. While 1 in 10 (10%) people aged 50-59 are waiting 12 hours or more in Emergency Departments, this rises to one third (32%) of those aged 90 and older.

We know that corridor care also causes untold distress to staff who cannot care for people in the way they would like. Day by day both patients and professionals find that their trust is being eroded in the NHS, as the Government fails to address the root causes of these problems.

Some medical professionals simply can’t face this prospect long term, so they are leaving their hospitals behind – and often their whole medical careers, too.

How can we solve corridor care?

The good news is that these problems can be tackled and solved, as evidenced by the fact that some hospitals have brought the problem of long waits and corridor care under control.

At the same time, we see frequent misunderstandings about what is driving this problem, leading to ‘solutions’ focused on the wrong things – for example, diverting people from A&E because of rising demand. In fact, between 2019/20 and 2024/25 the total number of attendances at major A&Es increased by 5%, while the number of times people went to A&E and had to wait 12+ hours for a bed increased by almost 2,000%. This strongly suggests that increased demand is not the main reason for long waits and corridor care.

Solving crowding and corridor care means focusing on the issues blocking the flow of patients through the whole of the hospital, like timely discharge and staffed bed capacity. Focus must be on long-term, sustainable improvements instead of temporary gains.

Age UK welcomes the fact that, after significant pressure to do so from many organisations including Age UK, The Royal College of Emergency Medicine and The Royal College of Nursing, NHS England has recently published A&E performance data from each individual hospital for the first time. Access to accurate and timely data is an essential tool to improve transparency, reduce local variation and drive improvements.

But good data, though essential, is not enough. Political will to fix this challenge is also required, as well as a recognition that these problems are systemic.

What needs to happen now

Our report identifies clear actions that the Government needs to take now to end this practice.

As a first step, the Government should publish a plan – with timescales and milestones – for the eradication of corridor care and appoint a Minister in the Department of Health and Social Care to report on progress to Parliament every six months.  This would allow Ministers to be held to account for their progress in getting rid of this disastrous practice.

And there’s a lot that hospitals themselves can do to improve the situation in their A&Es. We recommend turbo-charging a peer learning programme for hospitals and local health organisations to share proven solutions, tackle barriers to discharge and protect and support NHS staff.  Age UK and other voluntary and community sector organisations are ready to support with this.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Emergency Care published a report in November with seven clear recommendations for tackling corridor care with a range of ideas including how to reform funding and incentives and how to better share responsibility for patient flow across the whole hospital.

But what’s most needed now is for the Government to step up, show determined leadership and use all the levers at its disposal to bring this crisis to an end.

In a recent press release, Dr Iain Higginson, President of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine said:

“At the end of the month, the Government will be delivering its budget. The Chancellor has already flagged the Government will aim to bring down waiting lists for planned care, and we hope to see a commitment to tackle waits in our departments for patients who didn’t plan to be with us. This requires a political commitment to invest in hospital and social care capacity, which has been missing for a long time and remains that way. That’s why it’s a political failure.”

Here at Age UK, we couldn’t agree more.