Tuesday 5 August 2025
Number of people facing extreme waits in Scotland’s A&E ‘unacceptable and dangerous’ – RCEM
Unacceptable numbers of people are still being exposed to extreme long waits in Scotland’s A&Es new analysis by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine shows.
The latest Emergency Department performance figures – released today 4 August 2025 by Public Health Scotland – which cover June 2025 reveal that despite fewer people attending, performance is still worsening, and the number of patients waiting 12 hours increasing.
The data reveals for major EDs in Scotland in June 2025:
- There were 119,383 attendances at major EDs, a 5% decrease from the previous month of May 2025.
- 69.7% of patients were seen within four hours (78,857) which is a decrease of 1.1 percentage points on May 2025 but up 1.6 percentage points on June 2024.
- Those experiencing long waits also increased with more than one in every 10 patients (10.8%) attending waiting more than eight hours.
- And almost one in every 20 patients (4.35%) had to endure a stay of 12 hours or more before they were treated, admitted or discharged.
Responding to the latest data RCEM Vice President for Scotland Dr Fiona Hunter said: “These figures clearly evidence that the issues in our Emergency Departments are not caused by too many people attending.
“In June the number of people coming to our departments fell, but yet performance across every measure worsened when compared to the previous month.
“Most worrying is, that despite fewer attendances, thousands of our patients are still enduing extremely long waits. And we know that those who do are more likely to be the most unwell, often with multiple and complex needs. A fact that is unacceptable, and dangerous.
“The crisis in A&E is something our communities are deeply worried about. Politicians should respond to those concerns now and address these issues. Otherwise in a few short months we will be staring down the barrel of another awful winter where patient safety will again be put a risk.”
Graphic representations of today’s data, as well as the long-term trends, are available on the RCEM Website.