The Royal College of Emergency Medicine has warned that ambulances are being forced to queue outside the majority of emergency departments before they can unload patients.

Under NHS guidance, ambulance handovers should be completed within 15 minutes. However, approximately two-thirds of A&Es polled by the RCEM indicated they were struggling to meet the standard every day.

The college surveyed A&E departments across the UK between 8 and 14 November, receiving responses from 70 of about 230 units. During that week 94 per cent of clinical directors said that ambulances had been held outside their buildings at some point before patients could be taken into the hospital, whilst 61 per cent said ambulances were being forced to queue every day.

About half of emergency departments said care had been provided to patients in non-medical areas such as corridors every day.

A separate RCEM report, published earlier this month, estimated that 4,519 patients had died after waiting more than 12 hours in emergency departments in England in 2020-2021.