21 August 2025
Emergency Departments across Wales are experiencing a summertime surge with the number of patients facing 12-hour waits reaching its highest level so far this year in July.
With the Royal College of Emergency Medicine cautioning that these worrying figures should serve as a huge wake up call to the government ahead of winter.
The latest performance data, released today (21 August 2025) by Stats Wales, reveals one in seven patients (10,390) waited 12 hours or longer to be admitted, transferred or discharged from major Welsh EDs last month.
That’s 266 more patients who endured this extreme wait compared to June 2025.
But to get a sense of the longer-term deterioration, when you compare July 2025 to July 2018, this year saw almost three times as many people waiting 12 hours or more than seven years despite fewer people (-4%) attending.
The figures also revealed it was the worst July on record for eight hour waits – with one in four patients (17,312) facing these.
Meanwhile, almost half of all patients (46%) who attended waited at least four hours (32,657) – the worst July on record for this performance measure.
Dr Rob Perry, RCEM Vice President for Wales, said: “This data should serve as a huge wake up call for the Welsh government as winter looms.
“To make it clear, the number of people enduring a 12-hour wait is the highest so far this year. Previously we would have seen this level of demand during the winter – not at the height of summer. It’s extremely worrying.
“But let me be clear, we should not be attributing these long waits to the number of people arriving through the doors of our Emergency Departments. The issue is the inability to move patients onto a ward, due to the lack of available in-patient beds.
“If we can’t get people into ward beds when they need them, they must wait. And that wait happens in the ED, often on a trolley, in a corridor.
“Today the government has celebrated elective care waiting list wins, and ambulance handover successes, but it must also focus its efforts on improving the flow of patients through the hospital. Because if they don’t, the Welsh public will continue to face extreme waits.”