Figures from NHS England have revealed that managed 6.8 million attendances in three months, making it the busiest summer ever for A&E departments.

As the NHS prepares for what is expected to be a challenging winter period, the data shows there was record demand at A&Es in June, July and August combined, with 6,776,150 attendances – up 240,776 on the same period last year.

Emergency A&E admissions rose to 525,633 in August from 523,881 a year earlier – showing staff are dealing with growing numbers of unwell patients who need to be admitted to hospital.

Professor Sir Stephen Powis, NHS national medical director, said: “The NHS has just come out of the busiest summer on record for A&Es across the country, and preparations are already underway for what is expected to be an extremely difficult winter with significant strain on urgent and emergency care.

He added that NHS staff are preparing for "additional pressure over the winter" and that vaccination is "crucial" to preparation, the first ever campaign for RSV already underway alongside covid and flu jab rollouts for those most at risk of serious illness.

Powis said: “We are hugely grateful to NHS staff for their continuing efforts, and important improvements have been made in ambulance response times, long waits for treatment and cancer diagnosis. But it is clear, as evidenced in today’s Lord Darzi review, that waits across a range of services remain unacceptable and there is much more to do to deliver more timely care for those who need it."

The overall covid backlog for elective care remained at 7.62 million in July but waits of over a year dropped to 290,326 – the lowest since December 2020. It is the lowest proportion of people waiting over a year (3.8 per cent) since October 2020.

Ambulance services responded to 730,669 incidents last month, up 22,708 in a year. Of these, 73,630 were the most serious Category 1 calls, which is 28 per cent higher than pre-pandemic (57,598 in August 2019).

Response times for Category 1 incidents are still longer than the seven-minute national standard but are slightly quicker than August last year – dropping to an average of eight minutes three seconds, from eight minutes 17 seconds. Category 2 response fell by six minutes in a month, to 27 minutes 25 seconds – and down from 31 minutes 30 seconds in August 2023.

The data showed that the NHS has met the faster cancer diagnosis standard for the third month in a row with more than three quarters of people getting the all-clear or a definitive diagnosis within four weeks. More people than ever before were seen within the standard with over 220,000 getting all clear or a diagnosis within 28 days.

The figures also show that July was the busiest month on record for cancer referrals with 286,720 urgent referrals seen in just one month.

Bed capacity remains under pressure in hospitals across the country with an average of 12,092 patients a day spending more time in hospital than clinically needed.