Referral to Treatment (RTT) Waiting Times Statistics: Development and Plans

This page brings together information on developments and plans relating to referral to treatment (RTT) waiting times statistics. It will be updated periodically, as and when developments are completed or further developments are planned.  

Monthly Accredited Official Statistics 

We publish monthly Accredited Official Statistics on RTT waiting times to provide information on performance against the standard in the NHS Constitution which sets out that more than 92% of patients on incomplete pathways should have been waiting no more than 18 weeks from referral. These monthly data are based on an aggregate monthly submission from providers of consultant-led NHS services and published on the NHS England website here.  

Management information 

From April 2024, data from the Waiting List Minimum Dataset (WLMDS) has been published alongside the monthly RTT data here. The WLMDS is a weekly data collection relating to demand, activity and waiting lists for elective care. It is considered to be management information and is subject to less validation than the monthly official RTT statistics. There may be issues regarding the quality and completeness of the recorded WLMDS data which are not routinely reviewed centrally.  

Making NHS performance statistics more accessible and transparent  

We are working on the presentation of our statistics to ensure they are easily accessible to a range of users. 

In November 2025, we released an interactive dashboard of the monthly referral to treatment waiting times statistics. The dashboard is a more visual and interactive version of the Accredited Official Statistics monthly data and is now a regular statistical product that is released on the same day as the main publication. We are reviewing feedback and considering priorities for enhancements to this dashboard. We invite users to contact england.rtt@nhs.net with feedback on the dashboard.   

From November 2025, WLMDS data are released in a dashboard, providing a more detailed breakdown of the data already published in an XLSX summary file. It is planned that a future release will include data download functionality. 

From the publication on 9 July 2026, the published excel file of WLMDS data will include a breakdown of completed pathways broken down by reason for removal from the waiting list including:

• Start of first definitive treatment
• Start of active monitoring initiated by the patient
• Start of active monitoring initiated by the care professional
• Decision not to treat
• Patient declined offered treatment
• Patient died before treatment

with additional figures for cases where:

• A valid reason for removal from the waiting list was not supplied
• The reason given indicates the removal is a transfer or clock nullification and so is excluded from the completed pathway total

Health inequalities  

Following the commitment in the Elective Reform Plan to publish waiting list information broken down by demographics to allow greater visibility of potential health inequalities, we have, since July 2025, published a summary of WLMDS data by age, sex, ethnicity and indices of multiple deprivation deciles (IMD). 

Methodological information  

We plan to consolidate the existing guidance, definitions, quality and methodological information available in the RTT statistical press notice and Information Standard into a single accessible resource. This will include additional information on reproducibility of key metrics, organisational and series changes to support appropriate interpretation of the RTT statistics over time, and comparability to other UK waiting times statistics. We aim to publish a first version of this document by August 2026. 

Unreported removals  

We have published an explainer document to provide more information and support users’ understanding of unreported removals (any flow on or off the waiting list not captured in the submitted clock start or completed pathway numbers). Since new RTT periods (clock starts) were added as a data item in the RTT submission from Oct 2015, it has been possible to calculate the volume of unreported removals from other parts of the RTT waiting times collection. However, to support transparency and understanding, we have added columns into the published national time series file to show the number of unreported removals and the percentage of total removals accounted for by unreported removals. 

During summer and autumn 2026, unreported removals is the focus on a nine-week data quality improvement cycle for the Elective Care Data Quality Group, chaired by the National Elective Care Programme and including representatives from NHSE regional teams. The purpose of this group is to highlight data quality changes and challenges, review progress in improving data quality, and share learning and good practice. Significant data quality issues are escalated via regional data governance processes.

For the unreported removals cycle, we will provide a ‘toolkit’ of provider-level reporting and suggested questions for regions to use in discussions with providers to help improve the quality of submissions. While the focus is on the rate of unreported removals, a key aim will be to improve timely reporting of completed pathways. This will include encouraging providers to take the opportunity to update their completed pathway figures on a six-monthly basis in line with our published revisions policy. Changes to WLMDS in April/May 2026 allow for easier bulk resubmission of clock stops and the supply of ‘Patient Not Present’ data, both of which should drive improved data completeness and reduce unreported removals.

We will use the data quality improvement work and an associated analytical deep dive to understand the reasons why completed pathways are not recorded in time, as well as identifying any other reasons for unreported removals. The findings will inform good practice to be shared and whether any further guidance should be incorporated into existing documentation, such as the RTT recording and reporting guidance.

Unreported removals may be revisited as a topic for a future data quality cycle to review progress after the initial focused work.

Engagement with users of RTT statistics

We welcome feedback on RTT statistical outputs and use several approaches to gather this.  

You can contact us by emailing england.rtt@nhs.net, including contact details enabling us to reach out for further discussions.   

We recommend signing up to the Government Statistical Service (GSS) health and social care newsletter to receive updates on developments to RTT waiting times statistics and other related official statistics: Office for National Statistics – Sign up for GSS Health and Care newsletter.