The damning charts that reveal the full extent of A&E's crisis with levels at worst for over a year

The NHS winter crisis has continued to hit England as A&E waiting times, ambulance response times and waiting lists continue to operate at near-record-breaking levels of stress. Only 54.7 per cent of arrivals at major A&E departments were either admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours of arrival in December.

That’s the fourth lowest percentage on record, and the lowest since December 2022 when just 49.6 per cent were seen within four hours. The NHS target used to be that 95 per cent of arrivals would be processed within four hours. However, that was subsequently lowered to 76 per cent but is still being routinely missed.

The last time that major A&E departments saw at least 76 per cent of patients within four hours was May 2021.

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The figures do improve slightly when considering all types of A&E such as walk-in centres. A total of 69.4 per cent of arrivals were either admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours.

The last time that the 76 per cent target was met for all types of A&E was August 2021. Meanwhile, a total of 44,045 people were waiting for over 12 hours to be admitted once a decision to admit had been made - that’s the third highest total on record behind only October 2023 (44,655) and December 2022 (54,573).

People with suspected strokes or heart attacks waited an average of nearly 46 minutes for an ambulance in December. That’s compared to a target of just 18 minutes for what are classed as category two calls.

While targets are a long way from being met, the situation is better than at the same time a year earlier. In December 2022 category two calls had an average response time of one hour and