The Care Quality Commission has published its annual state of health care and adult social care in England 2021/2022.

The report investigates trends, shares examples of good care and points out areas that need improvement.

According to the report, the health and social care system is gridlocked.

The report said: "Twelve months ago, we highlighted the risk of a tsunami of unmet need across all sectors, with increasing numbers of people unable to access care. We said that funding must be used to enable new ways of working that recognise the inter-connectedness of all health and care services, not just to prop up existing approaches.

Today, our health and care system is in gridlock and this is clearly having a huge negative impact on people’s experiences of care."

The report points out that people in need of urgent care are at increased risk of harm due to delays in ambulance response times, waiting in ambulances outside hospitals and waiting for triage.

A lack of social care means people are in hospital longer than they need to be.

There is high pressure on urgent and emergency care services due to the difficulty accessing primary care services.

A root cause of these problems is staff shortages and difficulty recruiting and retaining staff.

The report also pointed out that there is still inequality across the health service with people living in the worst performing areas more than twice as likely to wait more than 18 weeks for treatment as people in the best performing areas.