Age UK says Ministers Must Set A Date to End Corridor Care

1 in 3 (one third or 32%) of those aged 90 and older waited for 12 hours or more in A&E to be admitted or discharged home in 2024/25. ^[i]

The number of instances of 'corridor care' of 12 hours or more has increased
525-fold since 2015/16.^[ii]

1.15 million people aged 60 and over waited 12 hours or more in A&E to be admitted or discharged home in 2024/25.^[iii]

A recent survey of Age UK supporters revealed that a third of people said they would be less likely to go to hospital because of the Corridor Care crisis, and 53% said that they would feel more anxious if they found themselves there.^[iv]

"My very ill late husband, with a drip attached, was put in a chair, in a room filled with other people. He was desperate to go to the loo and there was no one to take him. He was left with excrement in his pants and was left in this state for over 20 hours. How dreadful he felt - no modesty"

Today Age UK launches 'The Longest Wait - Our A&E Crisis Demands an Emergency Response'; a new report which lays bare the devastating impact that 'Corridor Care' and long A&E waits can have on older people. The Charity says that it's a crisis hiding in plain sight in our hospitals and that Ministers need to act urgently to tackle it.  

And while long waits and corridor care in overly busy A&E departments and happen to people of all ages they are particularly likely to happen to older people, especially the oldest old, including some who are extremely ill or even dying.

The new report shows that:

• 1 in 3 (one third or 32%) of those aged 90 and older are waiting 12 hours or more in A&E to be admitted or discharged home in 2024/25.^[v]
• The number of instances of 'corridor care' of 12 hours or more has increased 525-fold since 2015/16.^[vi]
• Between 2019/20 and 2024/25 the number of attendances to A&E that resulted in a 12-hour wait for a bed increased by nearly 2000%.^[vii]
• Last year, 532,451 people experienced corridor care of 12 hours or more.^[viii]

Age UK has heard heartbreaking stories from older people who have had to face treatment, tests, and life-changing news without privacy and in unsafe conditions. Some have told us they have suffered the indignity of having to use bedpans in corridors, or of lying on the floor because the chair provided was too uncomfortable. Tragically, some older people die before making it to a ward.

One 86-year-old we heard from was left in a disused corridor for 36 hours and others reported waiting in the corridor for well over 12 hours, sometimes even multiple days. Some reported seeing or hearing people dying in the corridor next to them as they waited. Many more spoke of a lack of facilities in the hospital, with others saying they had caught other illnesses or developed further health problems while they waited.

For these older people the fear of going back to A&E can be very real. A recent Age UK survey revealed that a third of Age UK supporters said they would be less likely to go to hospital because of the corridor care crisis, and 53% said that they would feel more anxious if they found themselves there.^[ix]

Recent polling of UK people aged 65+ by Age UK revealed that:

• 89%, equivalent to 11.7 million older people, agreed that corridor care is undignified and unsafe, particularly for older people.
• 79%, equivalent to 10.4 million older people, agreed that patients should never be cared for in corridors under any circumstances.^[x]

Other harrowing comments we received, said:

• "My very ill late husband, with a drip attached, was put in a chair, in a room with some dreadful people ([the] police had to be called at one time). He was desperate to go to the loo and there was no one to take him. He was left with excrement in his pants and was left in this state for over 20 hours. How dreadful he felt - no modesty." 
• "My friend's mother was left waiting ages when she was having a heart attack and died before receiving any care." 
• "Some people - many elderly - had been there for many hours. Absolutely no dignity. There were puddles of urine on the floor, which meant those poor people were lying in a wet bed." 
• "I was taken by an ambulance to hospital with suspected internal bleeding (it was cancer). I sat in a chair in A&E overnight with a drip in my arm. Eventually, I was given a trolley at 8am the next morning". 

Inequalities

These problems are not however experienced equally among all older people.

• More than a third 35% of ethnic minority people aged 50+ experienced NHS care delivered in corridors, compared to 22% of white people the same age.xi

• 30% of people aged 50+ with a long-term health condition has experienced corridor care themselves, compared to 18% of those without. xii
• 34% of carers aged 50+ have experienced corridor care themselves, compared to 20% of those who are not carers. xiii

Staffing

Long A&E waits and corridor care affect staff too. The Royal College of Nursing's (RCN) 2025 'On the Frontline of the UK's Corridor Care Crisis' report, surveying nursing staff across the UK, found that Corridor Care is a significant feature of many staff's daily experience: two thirds (67%) of the respondents said that they deliver care in an inappropriate setting every day. This is affecting their ability to care for people and is leaving them demoralised and distressed. xiv 

Among the A&E nurses who responded to the RCN's survey, 91% said that patient care and safety is being compromised.^[xi]

Lack of hospital planning and care in the community

The problem usually stems in large part from the hospital's inability to process people quickly once they're through the door. On any given day, there are 13,000 people medically fit for discharge stuck in hospitals in our country, almost all of them aged 65 plus.xvi

These delayed discharges can happen for a number of different reasons, and the following areas need to be addressed to speed up the flow in hospitals: 

• Poor organisation and co-ordination of functions and activities within the hospital
• A lack of social care and other forms of support in the community
• Delays in accessing community health services such as District Nurses and Occupational Therapists.

An increase in the availability of senior medical staff in and around A&E, particularly of geriatricians who specialise in the care of older people, can really help to speed things up because with their experience and insight they are better able to make quick decisions about what's best for an older person. In some cases, the right course of action may be for them to return home and be treated there.

Caroline Abrahams CBE, Age UK Charity Director, said: "What's happening to some very ill older people when they come to A&E is a crisis hiding in plain sight which the Government must face up to and take immediate action to resolve. No one should have to spend their final days in a hospital corridor where it's impossible for the staff to provide good, compassionate care, and it's truly shocking that this is what is happening to some very old people in some hospitals, today and every day. And as we head into winter, we fear that an already very difficult situation in and around some A&Es will get even worse.

"Many of the stories we have heard from older people and their families are heart-breaking and, to make it worse, the older you are, the more likely you are it seems to endure a lengthy and often uncomfortable wait. Corridor care and long A& E waits are like a rot eating away the heart of the NHS, undermining public trust and destroying the ability of committed hospital staff to be able to take pride in a job well done. As a result, we fear that poor quality care in and around some A&E departments is now almost expected - a truly dire situation we must act urgently to turn around.

"The good news is that these problems can be tackled and solved - some hospitals have the problem of long waits and corridor care under control. There's a lot that hospitals themselves can do to improve the situation in their A&Es, but what's most needed now is for Government to step up, show determined leadership and use all the levers at its disposal - including targets, inspection and funding - to bring this crisis, which is disproportionately hurting our oldest old, to an end."     

Calls on Government

To restore a sense of decency, and to give older people the dignity and respect they deserve, Age UK calls for the Government to implement a package of measures now:  

• Urgently produce a funded operational plan to reduce the incidence of long A&E waits and end Corridor Care, with specific deadlines and milestones.
• Establish a robust system to collect and publish regular data on corridor care (as well as long A&E waits), and their impacts on the public, including by age and ethnicity.
• Appoint a Minister in the Department of Health and Social Care to be accountable for reducing long A&E waits and ending corridor care and require them to report on progress to Parliament every six months.
• Turbo-charge a peer learning programme for hospitals and local health organisations (Integrated Care Boards) to share proven solutions, tackle barriers to discharge and protect and support NHS staff.
• Work at pace to implement the 10 Year Health Plan, especially the 'hospital to home' shift and creation of a Neighbourhood Health Service, ensuring social care and the VCSFE are fully played in - so fewer older people need to come to A&E in the first place.

Case Studies

Susan, 78, lives alone in South London. Despite living with heart problems Susan has stayed independent.

But in the summer of 2023 Susan suffered a heart attack.  

She drove herself to hospital. With no beds available, she remained on a couch in a curtained-off area near A&E. 

That couch would be her bed for the next 13 hours. 

Susan describes the atmosphere as intense and relentless. She could hear other people shouting in pain and there was no privacy. She also recalls people dying around her. 

"I was next to a man who was clearly very unwell. I could hear everything. He was on his own for quite a while and then his wife joined him. Later his wife was ushered away, and he was wheeled off. I'm certain he died. And he died right next to me."  

Susan believes she witnessed a second death that day: "Opposite me, I heard the defibrillator going again and again. The doctor shouted, 'stand clear', then silence. The doctor used the expression, "we're calling it at" to determine the time of death which coincided with the time on my watch."  

Around 1am, 22 hours after she had originally suffered a heart attack, Susan was moved into intensive care.

Eleven months later Susan experienced another heart attack. Due to an ambulance strike she drove herself to hospital for a second time. Again, she was placed on a couch in an emergency area and observed the chaos around her: "I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The corridors were lined with patients on hard couches, hooked up to drips, some moaning in pain, some exposed. It reminded me of war films, just beds and queues and people suffering."   

These conditions have left her fearful of ever returning. 

A definition of Corridor Care.

Corridor care is closely linked to long waits in A&E . It refers to the practice of providing care to patients in hospital corridors or other non-designated areas and inappropriate care settings. These may be called temporary care environments (TCE) or temporary escalation spaces (TES). At Age UK we refer specifically to older people in this situation who are forced to wait in unsuitable surroundings before formally transferring onto a ward. These can include corridors, or re-purposed cupboards, often on a trolley, sometimes a hard chair, even in more extreme cases in toilets. These places are often uncomfortable, noisy, anything but private, and under-staffed. There is also commonly a lack of facilities: it's difficult to get food or water or access a toilet. Also, the non-ward spaces lack access to equipment such as access to oxygen, cardiac monitors, suction and other lifesaving equipment In short, it's not where you want to be if you are very unwell, whatever your age.

Sadly, this type of care is not limited to hospital corridors. We are seeing 'practice creep' of corridor care becoming increasingly common in hospital wards and bays, in older people being held in ambulances for extended periods, and in inappropriate discharge facilities (none of which are captured in the 12-hour wait statistics) and we fear these practices may be putting off some older people from going to hospital at all, even if they are very ill.

Age UK's Winter appeal
Winter can be challenging, but for older people, it can feel even harder. That's why Age UK has launched a new appeal, to shine a light on the Crisis hiding in plain sight of which corridor care is just one and keep services like the Charity's free and confidential Advice Line and Telephone Friendship Service running. To find out more visit: https://www.ageuk.org.uk/crisis. Anyone who needs support can call 0800 169 6565.

ENDS

Notes to Editors

Follow the link to the report 'The longest wait' here:

https://www.ageuk.org.uk/longestwaitreport

[i] NHS England (2025) Freedom of Information request by the Royal College of Emergency

Medicine. Unpublished internal communication.

[ii] Age UK analysis of NHS England (2025) Freedom of Information request by the Royal College

of Emergency Medicine. Unpublished internal communication.

[iii] NHS England (2025) Hospital Accident & Emergency Activity, 2024-25 (https://digital.nhs.uk/ data-and-information/publications/statistical/hospital-accident--emergency-activity/2024-25).

[iv] Age UK (2025) Corridor Care Quarterly Question polling, July 2025. [19553 people surveyed].

[v] NHS England (2025) Freedom of Information request by the Royal College of Emergency

Medicine. Unpublished internal communication.

[vi] Age UK analysis of NHS England (2025) Freedom of Information request by the Royal College

of Emergency Medicine. Unpublished internal communication.

[vii] Age UK analysis of NHS England (2025) Hospital Accident & Emergency Activity, 2024-25

(https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/hospital-accident--emergency-activity/2024-25).

[viii] NHS England (2025) Hospital Accident & Emergency Activity, 2024-25 (https://digital.nhs.uk/

data-and-information/publications/statistical/hospital-accident--emergency-activity/2024-25).[ix] Age UK (2025) Corridor Care Quarterly Question polling, July 2025. [19553 people surveyed].

[x] Age UK (2025) Kantar online polling of 1,112 UK people aged 65+ for Age UK, conducted between 2 and 15 September 2025. Estimates scaled up to the UK age 65+ population by Age UK using ONS mid-year population estimates for 2024.

[xi] Age UK (2025) Kantar online polling of 2,411 'White' UK people and 191 'BAME' UK people

aged 50+ for Age UK, conducted between 2 and 15 September 2025. Estimates scaled up to the UK age

50+ population by Age UK using ONS mid-year population estimates for 2024

[xii] Age UK (2025) Kantar online polling of 941 UK people with a health condition and 1,653 UK

people without a health condition aged 50+ for Age UK, conducted between 2 and 15 September 2025.

Estimates scaled up to the UK age 50+ population by Age UK using ONS mid-year population estimates

for 2024.

[xiii] Age UK (2025) Kantar online polling of 528 UK people who provide care and 2,096 UK people

who do not provide care aged 50+ for Age UK, conducted between 9 and 15 September 2025. Estimates

scaled up to the UK age 50+ population by Age UK using ONS mid-year population estimates for 2024.

[xiv]

RCN (Royal College of Nursing) (2025) On the Frontline of the UK's Corridor Care Crisis,

January 2025. Available at: https://www.rcn.org.uk/-/media/Royal-College-Of-Nursing/Documents/

Publications/2025/January/011-944.pdf (Accessed: 13 October 2025).[xv] RCN (Royal College of Nursing) (2025) On the Frontline of the UK's Corridor Care Crisis,

January 2025. Available at: https://www.rcn.org.uk/-/media/Royal-College-Of-Nursing/Documents/

Publications/2025/January/011-944.pdf (Accessed: 13 October 2025).

[xvi] NHS England (2025) Acute discharge situation report and National Audit Office (2016)

Discharging older patients from hospital. Available at: https://www.nao.org.uk/reports/discharging-olderpatients-from-hospital/ (Accessed: 13 October 2025).