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Recent analysis by BBC Wales indicates that the Welsh government is unlikely to meet its key health targets ahead of the upcoming Senedd election on 7 May. These goals, announced by Health Secretary Jeremy Miles in April 2025, include reducing waiting lists by 200,000, completely eliminating waits of two years or longer, and ensuring no patient waits more than eight weeks for diagnostic tests. Despite noticeable progress, the targets appear increasingly out of reach.
Official statistics set to be released soon will provide a clearer picture of NHS Wales’ performance before the election, highlighting ongoing issues with waiting times in planned treatments, emergency care, and cancer services. In his April 2025 address, Miles emphasized that tackling waiting lists was his “number one priority,” pledging to reduce the size of waiting lists to near pre-pandemic levels by March 2026. This commitment was supported by an additional £120 million investment aimed at expanding outpatient appointments, diagnostic testing, and treatments such as cataract surgeries.
BBC Wales’ review suggests that achieving the planned reductions in waiting lists within a single month would require unprecedented progress. Particularly challenging is lowering the proportion of patients in north Wales waiting over two years, with 69% of such long waits currently concentrated in the Betsi Cadwaladr health board area. Meanwhile, diagnostic test waits have recently increased, with over 48,000 cases waiting more than eight weeks, a rise of 10,000 since the target was set to reduce this figure to zero.
Despite these setbacks, official figures indicate that overall waiting lists in Wales have been decreasing for eight consecutive months. However, they remain above pre-pandemic levels. Political parties feature NHS improvements prominently in their manifestos, with Labour aiming to meet a 26-week maximum waiting time by the end of the next Senedd term and proposing a £4 billion hospital building program. The Conservatives plan to declare a “health emergency” to tackle waiting times by 2030, while Plaid Cymru promises to establish 10 new surgical hubs. Other parties, including Reform, the Liberal Democrats, and the Greens, focus on various strategies ranging from emergency action plans and social care investment to shifting resources toward prevention and community care.
The challenge of reducing waiting lists is compounded by the NHS’s failure to meet other critical health targets, such as timely emergency care and cancer treatment. February figures revealed that only 63.7% of patients spent fewer than four hours in emergency departments, falling short of the 95% target. Cancer treatment targets are also missed; in January, 57% of patients received their first treatment within 62 days of suspicion, below the 75% benchmark. The Royal College of Surgeons in Wales highlighted that planned care services have yet to fully recover from the pandemic’s impact, with staff facing high pressure, limited theatre access, and elevated burnout compared to other parts of the UK. The college advocates for surgical hubs to play a central role in reducing waiting lists, recommending the establishment of at least four hubs at existing sites within the first year of the next government’s term
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