Age UK Norwich Calls for Urgent End to Corridor Care Crisis

Age UK Norwich says ministers must set a date to end corridor care - strongly associated with long A&E waits - and produce a plan to achieve it  

A recent survey of Age UK supporters revealed that a third of people said they would be less likely to go to hospital because of the Corridor Care crisis, and 53% said that they would feel more anxious if they found themselves there. 

Today Age UK launches ‘The Longest Wait - Our A&E Crisis Demands an Emergency Response’; a new report which lays bare the devastating impact that ‘Corridor Care’ and long A&E waits can have on older people. The Charity says that it’s a crisis hiding in plain sight in our hospitals and that Ministers need to act urgently to tackle it.   

And while long waits and corridor care in overly busy A&E departments and happen to people of all ages they are particularly likely to happen to older people, especially the oldest old, including some who are extremely ill or even dying. 

The new report shows that:  

• 1 in 3 (one third or 32%) of those aged 90 and older are waiting 12 hours or more in A&E to be admitted or discharged home in 2024/25.
• The number of instances of ‘corridor care’ of 12 hours or more has increased 525-fold since 2015/16.
• Between 2019/20 and 2024/25 the number of attendances to A&E that resulted in a 12-hour wait for a bed increased by nearly 2000%.
• Last year, 532,451 people experienced corridor care of 12 hours or more.

Age UK has heard heartbreaking stories from older people who have had to face treatment, tests, and life-changing news without privacy and in unsafe conditions. Some have told us they have suffered the indignity of having to use bedpans in corridors, or of lying on the floor because the chair provided was too uncomfortable. Tragically, some older people die before making it to a ward. 

One 86-year-old we heard from was left in a disused corridor for 36 hours and others reported waiting in the corridor for well over 12 hours, sometimes even multiple days. Some reported seeing or hearing people dying in the corridor next to them as they waited. Many more spoke of a lack of facilities in the hospital, with others saying they had caught other illnesses or developed further health problems while they waited.  

For these older people the fear of going back to A&E can be very real. A recent Age UK survey revealed that a third of Age UK supporters said they would be less likely to go to hospital because of the corridor care crisis, and 53% said that they would feel more anxious if they found themselves there.

Recent polling of UK people aged 65+ by Age UK revealed that: 

• 89%, equivalent to 11.7 million older people, agreed that corridor care is undignified and unsafe, particularly for older people. 
• 79%, equivalent to 10.4 million older people, agreed that patients should never be cared for in corridors under any circumstances.

Other harrowing comments we received, said:   

• “My very ill late husband, with a drip attached, was put in a chair, in a room with some dreadful people ([the] police had to be called at one time). He was desperate to go to the loo and there was no one to take him. He was left with excrement in his pants and was left in this state for over 20 hours. How dreadful he felt - no modesty.”   
• “My friend's mother was left waiting ages when she was having a heart attack and died before receiving any care.”   
• “Some people - many elderly - had been there for many hours. Absolutely no dignity. There were puddles of urine on the floor, which meant those poor people were lying in a wet bed.”   
• “I was taken by an ambulance to hospital with suspected internal bleeding (it was cancer). I sat in a chair in A&E overnight with a drip in my arm. Eventually, I was given a trolley at 8am the next morning”.  

Inequalities 

These problems are not however experienced equally among all older people.  

• More than a third 35% of ethnic minority people aged 50+ experienced NHS care delivered in corridors, compared to 22% of white people the same age. 
• 30% of people aged 50+ with a long-term health condition has experienced corridor care themselves, compared to 18% of those without.
• 34% of carers aged 50+ have experienced corridor care themselves, compared to 20% of those who are not carers. 

Staffing  

Long A&E waits and corridor care affect staff too. The Royal College of Nursing’s (RCN) 2025 ‘On the Frontline of the UK's Corridor Care Crisis’ report, surveying nursing staff across the UK, found that Corridor Care is a significant feature of many staff’s daily experience: two thirds (67%) of the respondents said that they deliver care in an inappropriate setting every day. This is affecting their ability to care for people and is leaving them demoralised and distressed. 

Among the A&E nurses who responded to the RCN’s survey, 91% said that patient care and safety is being compromised.

Lack of hospital planning and care in the community 

The problem usually stems in large part from the hospital’s inability to process people quickly once they’re through the door. On any given day, there are 13,000 people medically fit for discharge stuck in hospitals in our country, almost all of them aged 65 plus. 

These delayed discharges can happen for a number of different reasons, and the following areas need to be addressed to speed up the flow in hospitals:  

• Poor organisation and co-ordination of functions and activities within the hospital  
• A lack of social care and other forms of support in the community 
• Delays in accessing community health services such as District Nurses and Occupational Therapists. 

An increase in the availability of senior medical staff in and around A&E, particularly of geriatricians who specialise in the care of older people, can really help to speed things up because with their experience and insight they are better able to make quick decisions about what’s best for an older person. In some cases, the right course of action may be for them to return home and be treated there. 

Calls on Government

To restore a sense of decency, and to give older people the dignity and respect they deserve, Age UK Norwich calls for the Government to implement a package of measures now:   

• Urgently produce a funded operational plan to reduce the incidence of long A&E waits and end Corridor Care, with specific deadlines and milestones.  
• Establish a robust system to collect and publish regular data on corridor care (as well as long A&E waits), and their impacts on the public, including by age and ethnicity.   
• Appoint a Minister in the Department of Health and Social Care to be accountable for reducing long A&E waits and ending corridor care and require them to report on progress to Parliament every six months.   
• Turbo-charge a peer learning programme for hospitals and local health organisations (Integrated Care Boards) to share proven solutions, tackle barriers to discharge and protect and support NHS staff.   
• Work at pace to implement the 10 Year Health Plan, especially the ‘hospital to home’ shift and creation of a Neighbourhood Health Service, ensuring social care and the VCSFE are fully played in – so fewer older people need to come to A&E in the first place.    

A definition of Corridor Care.

Corridor care is closely linked to long waits in A&E. It refers to the practice of providing care to patients in hospital corridors or other non-designated areas and inappropriate care settings. These may be called temporary care environments (TCE) or temporary escalation spaces (TES). At Age UK we refer specifically to older people in this situation who are forced to wait in unsuitable surroundings before formally transferring onto a ward. These can include corridors, or re-purposed cupboards, often on a trolley, sometimes a hard chair, even in more extreme cases in toilets.  These places are often uncomfortable, noisy, anything but private, and under-staffed. There is also commonly a lack of facilities: it’s difficult to get food or water or access a toilet. Also, the non-ward spaces lack access to equipment such as access to oxygen, cardiac monitors, suction and other lifesaving equipment In short, it’s not where you want to be if you are very unwell, whatever your age.

Sadly, this type of care is not limited to hospital corridors. We are seeing ‘practice creep’ of corridor care becoming increasingly common in hospital wards and bays, in older people being held in ambulances for extended periods, and in inappropriate discharge facilities (none of which are captured in the 12-hour wait statistics)  and we fear these practices may be putting off some older people from going to hospital at all, even if they are very ill.