Age UK: “Delayed discharges up nearly 70% in five years”

In a new report the charity says that: “Recent governments have taken their eye off the ball on delayed discharges which are up nearly 70% in five years. At least 6.75 million bed days a year are being lost to delayed discharges costing the NHS £229 million in June alone.

Age UK is calling on the Government and NHS leaders to take urgent action to tackle delayed hospital discharges among older people, describing the issue as a “crisis hiding in plain sight”. This is essential, the charity say, if there is to be any hope of reducing and ultimately eliminating excessively long waits in A&E and the associated phenomenon of corridor care – both of which severely impact our older population.

In a powerful new report, The Longest Wait to Leave, Age UK’s new analysis shows how older people can experience harm at every stage of their journey into, through and out of hospital again, because of unwarranted delays. These can start with waiting for an ambulance, then in A&E for a decision to admit and a bed on a ward, finally culminating in a delayed discharge when they are well enough to go home.

The charity argues that far too little policy attention has been paid to tackling delayed discharges by successive governments, so it’s not surprising they have soared. Age UK’s analysis of the relevant statistics tells a sorry story:

In 2025/26, more than half (57%) of people that could be discharged on a typical day are still stuck in hospital.
This means over 13,000 people every day are still in hospital despite being medically well enough to leave, overwhelmingly older people.
Since 2021, this number has grown by nearly 70%,
In 2025/26, 6.75 million bed days were lost to discharge delays of seven days or more.
In June 2026, delayed discharges cost the NHS £229 million. For 2025/26 the total cost was £2.66 billion.
12+ hour waits in A&E for a hospital bed hit 50,000 in June, a new high for that month and more typical of the height of winter. A shortage of hospital beds is a leading factor in this crisis, because if someone who is medically fit to leave is stuck in a bed that means it cannot be used by another person who needs to be admitted.
Across all of 2025/26, the average bed occupancy for adult general and acute beds was 94.5% well above the threshold of 85% that experts say is safe.
Nearly 1 in 7 (14.4%) of all our hospital beds are being occupied by people who are medically fit to leave

In October 2025, Age UK revealed that the number of people experiencing corridor care had grown 525-fold since 2015/16, reaching over half a million incidents in 2024/25. We now know that in 2025/26 this number increased again, reaching 570,957 incidents, with a record 71,000 incidents in January 2026 alone. For comparison, in all of 2011/12, the earliest available full financial year, there were just 123 incidents across the entire year.

The prevalence of corridor care continues to increase, despite a pledge from the previous Secretary of State for Health and Care to end corridor care within this Parliament. A leading factor in these waits is the availability of beds in NHS hospitals. Around 28% of A&E attendances result in an admission, with almost half (45%) being older people. A combination of beds still being used by people medically fit for discharge and a declining overall number of beds means these admissions have nowhere to go. This not only directly harms older people, it also causes avoidable costs for the NHS and makes it harder for hospitals to cut long waiting lists for surgery and diagnostics.

There are approximately 128,000 NHS hospital beds available in total, potentially providing 46.7 million bed days a year. 6.75 million bed days lost to delayed discharges means more than 1 in 7 (14.4%) of all our hospital beds are being occupied by people who are medically fit to go home, with the proportion likely to be even higher in some places. The financial cost of these delays is staggering:

Estimates from June 2026 were that delayed discharges cost the NHS upwards of £229 million in a single month. Across all of 2025/26, the annual cost was estimated to be £2.66 billion.

Lack of social care is another reason for delayed discharges, and an associated problem is disagreements between councils and the NHS over who should pay for an older person’s support when they go back into the community. Unfortunately, sometimes older people get stuck in the middle of these funding disputes, and the longer someone waits in hospital, the greater their risk of deterioration. With every extra unnecessary day in hospital an older person’s needs are likely to increase, putting their chances of making a full recovery further out of reach.

Delayed discharges are also something of a post-code lottery: in recent data (June 2026) 32 NHS Trusts (just over 25%) accounted for half of the total number of delayed discharges. In those 32 Trusts alone, and in a single month, 206,000 bed days were lost to delayed discharge, at a cost of £116 million. There is also a nearly 20 percentage point difference between the region with the lowest proportion of people stuck in hospital and the region with the highest proportion (44% vs 63%) – but overall, only one NHS region achieved more than half (56%) of people medically fit for discharge leaving hospital on a typical day (East of England).

This shows that there is a significant challenge for those living in the worst affected areas, but it also speaks to the fact it doesn’t have to be this way. Age UK believes that with political will, the right policy responses and applying the lessons from those hospitals with much less of a problem with delays, it really should be possible to improve the situation, ultimately ending corridor care, as Ministers have pledged, and delays more generally.  

Age UK’s recommendations

To address delayed discharges and improve care for older people, Age UK is calling on the Government to:

End the funding disputes between the NHS and local authorities over who pays for an older person who needs social care and other forms of support following discharge.
Face up to the need to increase the number of hospital beds. 
Strengthen community capacity to help older people to get home, recover and stay well. This requires, among other things, enabling every older person to be assessed at home within 24 hours of discharge; the NHS being far more strategic and intentional in commissioning effective VCSFE organisations to help older people go home and settle, especially those living alone; and supporting the unpaid carers who will be caring for older people when they get home. Success will also depend on increasing the availability of intermediate care and reablement and ultimately, of course, on reforming social care and expanding its capacity. 
Turbo-charge a peer learning programme for hospitals to help them to minimise in-hospital discharge delays, caused by factors such as waiting for discharge letters to be signed and medication and transport home to be organised.
Strengthen data collection: Trusts should be required to collect and publish their numbers of 12+ hour waits and delayed discharges, alongside the ages of those affected.

In addition, the Charity repeats its calls for Government to:

Produce a funded operational plan to reduce the incidence of long A&E waits and end corridor care, with specific deadlines and milestones. 
Give explicit accountability for reducing long A&E waits and ending corridor care to a Minister in the Department of Health and Social Care, requiring them to report on progress to Parliament every six months.

Finally, we strongly recommend that the term ‘bed blockers’ is consigned to the past because it is victim-blaming and ageist. As this report shows, the problem is with the system not the person.

Caroline Abrahams, Charity Director at Age UK, said: “Policy makers have stopped talking about delayed discharges, but they are high and rising – truly a crisis hiding in plain sight. They do enormous harm to older people and cost the NHS and the taxpayer an absolute fortune. What’s more, we will never end the horror of corridor care at the front door of hospitals, for as long as we fail to get a grip on the problem of delayed discharges at the back door.”

“The good news is that it’s a problem we can solve, with political will, the right policy responses and by applying the lessons from those hospitals that have made progress in tackling delays. Above all we must agree a new approach that ends the squabbles between councils and the NHS about who pays for an older person’s support when they are fit to go home from hospital; increase the overall number of hospital beds; and build up capacity in the community to take these older people back and help them to make a good recovery, in part by making much greater use of voluntary sector effort, such as that we offer Age UK.

“Ultimately of course, we also need to reform social care so there are more and better services available to reduce the risks of older people needing to go to hospital in the first place, and to give them the support they need to get well again, when a hospital stay is unavoidable and they are well enough to leave.”

“Our report shows how terrible the impact on older people is when they are medically fit for discharge, but the arrangements cannot be put in place quickly enough or at all to allow this to happen. They are the victims in these situations, and that’s why we feel very strongly that the term ‘bed blockers’, which contains more than a tinge of ageism, should never be used again.”

Please share: