Bed-blocking cost NHS £2.66billion last year after delayed discharges surged when ministers 'took their eye off the ball'

By SHAUN WOOLLER, EXECUTIVE HEALTH EDITOR Published: 00:02, 22 July 2026 | Updated: 00:15, 22 July 2026 Bed-blocking cost the NHS £2.66 billion last year after delayed discharges surged when ministers 'took their eye off the ball', Age UK has warned. An average of 13,000 patients a day remained stuck in hospital despite being declared well enough to leave, with the number rising 70 per cent in five years, the charity says. This equates to a total of 6.75 million lost bed days in 2025/26, or more than one in seven (14.4 per cent) of the 128,000 beds available. Age UK's new report, titled 'The Longest Wait to Leave', reveals elderly people are suffering harm at every stage of their journey into, through and out of hospital because of unwarranted hold-ups. Delays getting patients out of hospital and back into their own home or care home fuel dangerous bottlenecks further down the chain, with doctors unable to admit new arrivals on to wards and ambulances unable to offload new arrivals in to A&E in a timely fashion. This in turn leads to fatally long waits for an ambulance to arrive and degrading care on trolleys in corridors. Age UK describes delayed discharges as a 'crisis hiding in plain sight' and warns it can also cause frailty and a loss of independence in patients left languishing in their bed. It says too little has been done to address the problem and is calling for urgent reform of social care so there are better services available to prevent elderly people being admitted to hospital in the first place and more support to help them leave as quickly as possible when admission is unavoidable. More than half of patients who were ready to leave hosptial on any given day last year failed to do so  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.' She added: '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.' The report notes that more than half (57 per cent) of people who were ready to leave on any given day last year failed to do so but there was wide variation, with the rate as high as 63 per cent in some places and as low as 44 per cent in others. Some delays are caused inside hospitals, including waits for doctors' reviews, discharge summaries, medicines and transport. Others arise because home-care packages, rehabilitation places, community nursing or care-home beds cannot be secured. In 2025/26, 6.75 million bed days were lost to discharge delays of seven days or more. Caroline Abrahams, charity Director at Age UK, said delayed discharges 'truly a crisis hiding in plain sight'. And waits of more than 12 hours 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. Around 28 per cent of A&E attendances result in an admission, with almost half (45 per cent) being older people. Across all of 2025/26, the average bed occupancy for adult general and acute beds was 94.5 per cent, which is well above the threshold of 85 per cent that experts say is safe and leaves little room for contingencies. The prevalence of corridor care continues to increase, despite a pledge from former health and social care secretary Wes Streeting to end it this Parliament. Age UK revealed last October 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. Age UK said: 'Recent governments have taken their eye off the ball on delayed discharges – up nearly 70 per cent in five years. 'To end corridor care, as ministers have promised, this must change.' A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: 'It is completely wrong to suggest this government has lost its focus on delayed discharge. Tackling the issue is essential to improving patient care, reducing pressure on NHS staff and freeing up hospital capacity. 'The cost to the NHS of people who are medically fit to leave hospital but cannot be discharged runs into the billions, which is why work to turn this around is already under way. Earlier this month, NHS England published its model discharge pathway, setting out best practice for getting patients home or into the right care setting as quickly and safely as possible. 'There is an urgent need to fix social care, and delayed discharge must be part of any conversation about how we build a care system that meets the needs of patients, families and the public.'