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NHS statistics for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

Health is devolved, so NHS statistics for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are produced separately by Public Health Scotland, the Welsh Government and the Department of Health in Northern Ireland, with NHS Education for Scotland publishing the Scottish NHS workforce. Each measures waiting times, A&E performance and staffing against its own targets and recording rules. Fact-checkers use these sources to test claims about a single nation and to judge whether a comparison with England is like for like.

Covers: UK · Release calendar

What it publishes

• Public Health Scotland publishes monthly stage-of-treatment waiting times for new outpatients, inpatients and day cases, plus quarterly cancer waiting times and other waits such as diagnostics, mental health and drug treatment.
• Public Health Scotland publishes A&E activity weekly for emergency departments and monthly for all A&E sites, including minor injury units, against Scotland's four-hour standard.
• NHS Education for Scotland publishes official quarterly NHSScotland workforce statistics on the Turas Data Intelligence site, covering staff in post, vacancies and turnover by board and job family.
• The Welsh Government publishes a monthly NHS activity and performance summary covering referral to treatment pathways, diagnostics and therapies, cancer, emergency departments and ambulance responses, with data tables on StatsWales.
• The Welsh Government publishes quarterly statistics on staff directly employed by NHS Wales, including sickness absence and vacancies.
• The Department of Health in Northern Ireland publishes quarterly waiting time statistics for emergency care, outpatients, inpatients and day cases, diagnostics and cancer, prepared by NISRA statisticians.
• The Department of Health in Northern Ireland publishes quarterly health and social care workforce statistics and an annual workforce census.
• Cross-UK coherence articles, produced by the ONS with all four health statistics producers, explain which measures can and cannot be compared between nations.

Key datasets

• Stage of treatment waiting times (Scotland)
  Ongoing and completed waits for new outpatients and for inpatient or day case treatment by NHS board and specialty, against the 12-week outpatient standard and the 12-week Treatment Time Guarantee. Also estimates the number of individual patients waiting.
  Updated: Monthly
• A&E activity and waiting times (Scotland)
  Attendances and four-hour performance by site and board. Weekly figures cover emergency departments only; monthly figures cover all A&E sites and are used for formal monitoring against the 95% standard.
  Updated: Weekly (Tuesdays) and monthly
• Cancer waiting times (Scotland)
  Performance against the 62-day standard (urgent suspicion of cancer referral to first treatment) and the 31-day standard (decision to treat to first treatment), both set at 95%, by board and cancer type.
  Updated: Quarterly
• NHSScotland workforce official statistics
  Staff in post as headcount and whole-time equivalent, vacancies, turnover and sickness absence for NHS Scotland boards, published by NHS Education for Scotland, with separate GP and primary care workforce releases.
  Updated: Quarterly
• NHS activity and performance summary (Wales)
  Monthly overview of Welsh referral to treatment pathways, diagnostics and therapies waits, cancer, emergency department times and ambulance responses, with links to health board dashboards and StatsWales tables.
  Updated: Monthly
• Performance and waiting times on StatsWales
  Downloadable Welsh tables for referral to treatment, diagnostic and therapy waits, cancer and emergency department performance by health board and month.
  Updated: Monthly
• NHS workforce: staff directly employed by NHS Wales
  Full-time equivalent staff by staff group and health board, sickness absence and estimated vacancies for NHS Wales. Replaced the earlier 'staff directly employed by the NHS' series.
  Updated: Quarterly
• Emergency care waiting times (Northern Ireland)
  Monthly attendances and time spent in emergency departments by HSC trust and hospital, against the four-hour and 12-hour targets, with time to triage and time to treatment.
  Updated: Quarterly
• Outpatient waiting times (Northern Ireland)
  Patients waiting for a first consultant-led outpatient appointment or ICATS appointment at each quarter end, by trust and specialty, against the target of 50% within 9 weeks and none over 52 weeks.
  Updated: Quarterly
• Accident and Emergency wait times across the UK (ONS coherence article)
  Joint review by the ONS, NHS England, Public Health Scotland, the Welsh Government and the Department of Health NI of how A&E waits are recorded in each nation, with comparable series from January 2013 to September 2023 and later notices on Scotland's revised standard.
  Updated: Ad hoc
• NHS planned care waiting times across the UK (ONS coherence article)
  Explains how referral to treatment and stage-of-treatment measures differ across the four nations and which adjusted comparisons are possible. A companion article covers cancer waiting times.
  Updated: Ad hoc
• Health and social care workforce statistics (Northern Ireland)
  Directly employed HSC staff by organisation, staff group and band, as headcount and whole-time equivalent, from the HR and payroll system, plus an annual March census.
  Updated: Quarterly

APIs and downloads

• Scotland Health and Social Care Open Data
  Public Health Scotland's CKAN open data portal with CSV resources for waiting times, A&E and other series. No key is needed.
• CKAN API for Scottish open data
  Standard CKAN JSON API: list datasets with package_list and query table resources with datastore_search. No key is needed; responses can be slow.
• Weekly A&E activity open dataset (Scotland)
  Weekly emergency department attendances and four-hour performance as CSV, refreshed each Tuesday for the week ending nine days earlier.
• StatsWales API
  Public REST API for the new StatsWales service at https://api.stats.gov.wales/v1, with endpoints to browse topics, view and filter datasets, and download them as JSON, CSV or XLSX. No key is needed. The older statswales.gov.wales address now redirects to the new service.
• Department of Health NI statistics dashboard
  Interactive summary of Northern Ireland health statistics hosted by NISRA. Each release page on health-ni.gov.uk also offers Excel tables.
• Scottish hospital waiting times look-up
  Patient-facing Public Health Scotland tool for typical waits by hospital and specialty. Useful context, but the official statistics releases are the citable source.

When it publishes

Public Health Scotland publishes at 9:30am, with weekly A&E figures every Tuesday and most waiting times releases monthly or quarterly on Tuesdays, listed on its forthcoming publications page. NES workforce statistics come out quarterly. Welsh Government releases appear at 9:30am on dates pre-announced on the gov.wales upcoming statistics calendar, with the NHS performance summary usually on the third or fourth Thursday of the month. The Department of Health in Northern Ireland publishes a downloadable statistical releases calendar; its waiting time releases are quarterly. The Welsh calendar is at https://www.gov.wales/statistics-and-research/upcoming and the Northern Ireland calendar at https://www.health-ni.gov.uk/publications/statistical-releases-calendar.

How to use it to check a claim

1. Start by identifying the nation. A UK-wide claim about 'NHS waiting lists' often uses England's figure only; check each nation's own release before accepting a UK total.
2. Name the measure and its target: Scotland's new outpatient 12-week standard and Treatment Time Guarantee, Wales's 26-week and 36-week referral to treatment measures, or Northern Ireland's 9-week and 52-week outpatient targets.
3. For Scottish A&E claims, check whether the figure is weekly (emergency departments only) or monthly (all A&E sites). Formal performance against the 95% standard is judged on the monthly all-sites figure.
4. For Welsh waiting lists, note that the release counts patient pathways and gives a separate management information estimate of individual patients, which is lower.
5. For Scottish planned care waits, check the date: PHS applied revised waiting time calculations from the 2023 Scottish Government guidance from July 2025, which affects comparisons across that point.
6. Before comparing nations, read the ONS coherence articles on A&E, planned care and cancer waits, which set out which measures are broadly comparable.
7. For workforce claims, check whether figures are headcount or whole-time equivalent and whether they cover directly employed staff only, which excludes most GPs in all three nations.

Common mistakes

• The ONS, working with all four producers, concluded that A&E waiting time statistics for Northern Ireland cannot be directly compared with those for England, Scotland and Wales, because Northern Ireland's clock-stop practice differs. Attendance counts can be broadly compared across all four.
• Wales's referral to treatment pathways include direct-access diagnostics and therapy waits that England excludes, while Scotland and Northern Ireland report separate stages of treatment rather than whole pathways. Adding stages together does not produce a figure comparable with England's waiting list.
• Each nation sets different targets: Scotland and England use 12-week or 18-week measures for planned care, Wales uses 26 and 36 weeks, and Northern Ireland uses 9 and 52 weeks for outpatients. A higher share meeting a target in one nation may reflect a different threshold.
• Twelve-hour A&E measures differ. Some count total time in the department from arrival, while England's long-running monthly measure counts waits from a decision to admit.
• Ambulance categories are not common across the UK. Wales introduced new purple and red call categories that its own release says are not comparable with earlier measures, and England uses Categories 1 to 4.
• New electronic record systems and recording changes, such as the Encompass rollout in Northern Ireland and Scotland's revised A&E standard, can shift figures for reasons unrelated to patient experience.

Can you compare NHS waiting times between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?

Only partly. Official cross-UK articles by the ONS and the four health statistics producers found that headline waiting list totals are not directly comparable, because each nation counts different things and sets different targets. Wales can be made broadly comparable with England after removing diagnostic and therapy pathways. A&E waits are broadly comparable for England, Scotland and Wales, but not for Northern Ireland. Trends over time within each nation are safer to compare.

What is the A&E target in Scotland?

Since 2007 Scotland's standard has been that 95% of people attending A&E are admitted, discharged or transferred within four hours of arrival. Public Health Scotland publishes weekly figures for emergency departments every Tuesday and monthly figures for all A&E sites, including minor injury units. Formal monitoring uses the monthly all-sites figure, which can differ noticeably from the emergency department figure alone because minor injury units are included.

Where are NHS Wales waiting times published?

The Welsh Government's monthly NHS activity and performance summary on gov.wales gives headline figures for treatment waiting lists, diagnostics, cancer, emergency departments and ambulances, with detailed tables on StatsWales at stats.gov.wales. The release notes that many measures still follow targets set by the previous Welsh Government and will be reported on that basis until they are replaced.

Who publishes NHS statistics in Northern Ireland?

The Department of Health in Northern Ireland publishes them through its Information Analysis Directorate, staffed by NISRA statisticians. Waiting times for emergency care, outpatients, inpatients, diagnostics and cancer are released quarterly on health-ni.gov.uk, with interactive versions on the NISRA data visualisation site. Health and social care workforce statistics are also quarterly, with an annual census each March.

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Links checked 2026-10-13. This page describes what the source publishes and gives no verdict on any claim.