Over 53,000 people now waiting for NHS treatment in Crawley area

53,808 people are waiting for treatment at Surrey and Sussex NHS Trust, according to figures just published by the NHS.

Of those waiting, a total of 2,434 have been waiting longer than a year. The NHS target is for patients to wait no longer than 18 weeks for hospital treatment, but locally, 45% of patients are waiting longer than that.

The number of people waiting for treatment across England has increased every single month since Rishi Sunak pledged to cut NHS waiting lists. Since he became Prime Minister, waiting lists have grown by 724,000 patients.

Doctors’ strikes are hampering NHS efforts to bring down waiting lists, but the Health Secretary hasn’t met junior doctors since May or consultants since March. Rishi Sunak still refuses to meet either group of doctors.

Labour will cut waiting times and ensure that the target of treatment within 18 weeks is met once again. The party is pledging to oversee the biggest expansion of NHS staff in history, training thousands more doctors and nurses a year. The health service will also focus more on providing healthcare in the community and make greater use of modern technology, so problems are caught earlier when it is simpler to treat patients and cheaper for the taxpayer.

Labour’s Parliamentary Candidate for Crawley, Peter Lamb said:

“Crawley people need and deserve better than this and only Labour will deliver that. In 2010, after 13 years of Labour Government, the Tories inherited an NHS with all waiting times under 18 weeks. Within months those times began to rise and that trajectory just continued. The figures were appalling even before the pandemic.

“They want you to think it’s all about Covid and doctors strikes. When in reality it’s about underfunding and 13 years of Tory mismanagement.

“Only a Labour Government, the party of the NHS, will pull it out of this crisis and restore it to good health. We will train thousands more staff and reform the health service, so we can have the confidence again that it will be there for us and for future generations whenever we need it.”