ONE in four ambulance patients in England waited over an hour to be handed to A&E departments last week, new figures show. 

The NHS England data, published today, shows delays were high across the week, with no clear evidence that strike action by nurses on December 15 had any specific impact. 

A total of 16,379 handover delays of more than an hour were recorded across hospital trusts, amounting to 24 per cent of all arrivals by ambulance. 

This was up from 17 per cent the previous week, and more than three times the number compared to the equivalent week in December 2021, when 7 per cent of ambulance patients waited over an hour. 

NHS trusts in England have a target of 95 per cent of all ambulance handovers to be completed within 30 minutes, with 100 per cent to be completed within 60 minutes.

Handover delays don’t necessarily mean that someone is waiting in an ambulance. The figure also includes patients who’ve been moved to an A&E department but are waiting to be handed over to a doctor. 

Nurses’ union RCN director for England Patricia Marquis said the figures show the system is “dangerously close to overheating completely.”

“A key part of the problem is that the vast majority of hospital beds are full — around 95 per cent — including with thousands of patients fit to be discharged,” she said.

“The lack of community and social care means they’ll be spending this Christmas in hospital.

“The real cause of this is record nursing vacancies in the NHS and tens of thousands more across health and social care. 

“Ministers can only begin to fix this by addressing the record nursing vacancies and valuing the profession properly by paying nurses fairly to retain and recruit the staff patients need.”