Second north Wales county declares health emergency

Emily Price

A second north Wales county has supported a Welsh Conservative motion to declare a health emergency.

The decision by Conwy County Borough Council follows a similar watered down motion voted through by Denbighshire County Council in November last year.

Clwyd MS and leader of the Welsh Conservatives Darren Millar welcomed Conwy’s decision to follow suit.

He said: “A health emergency must be declared Wales-wide. People on the ground recognise the crisis at the heart of our Welsh NHS, even if the Plaid-backed Labour Government fails to.

“Only the Welsh Conservatives have a credible plan to fix our Welsh NHS. We’ll declare a health emergency to ensure adequate resources and the entire apparatus of government is mobilised to address this crisis. We urgently need more hospital beds, diagnostic centres and surgical hubs.”

In July last year, the Tories in the Senedd tabled a motion calling on the Welsh Government to declare a country-wide health emergency.

It came following a report sent to First Minister Eluned Morgan by a senior coroner who said that many patients were dying because of long waits for ambulances.

Graeme Hughes’ warning in the ‘prevention of future deaths’ paper came following the death of an 89-year-old woman who waited 14 hours for an ambulance after a fall.

The Welsh Conservatives said it was unprecedented for a coroner to write directly to the First Minister.

However, the Senedd narrowly rejected the party’s calls to declare a health emergency with members voting 26-24 against the motion before agreeing to the Welsh Government’s amended version which focused on existing recovery efforts.

NHS statistics for Wales released today (January 22) revealed that performance against the 4-hour target, where 95% of new patients should spend less than 4 hours in emergency departments from arrival until admission, transfer or discharge, is the lowest it has been for three years at only 64.3% in December.

Waiting lists

Wales’ target is for no patients at all to wait over 12 hours – yet in December, 10,193 patients waited 12 hours or more, which was again higher than in November.

NHS treatment waiting lists remain at 757,866 pathways, the equivalent of nearly 1-in-4 Welsh people.

When Baroness Eluned Morgan was the health minister, she promised to eliminate these waits by March 2023 and again by March 2024 but failed to meet these targets and still has not.

Commenting on the latest statistics, Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee and the new Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care Peter Fox said: “It is clear that after 27 years of Plaid-backed Labour Governments, our NHS is broken. In some areas, the situation is even deteriorating.

“Ambulance response times, cancer treatment target performance and emergency department waits have all worsened, with the latter being further from the target than it has been for three years.

“The Welsh Conservatives have a credible plan to fix our NHS. We will declare a health emergency, increase the number of beds in our hospitals, and roll out rapid diagnostic centres and surgical hubs to improve patient flow and cut waits.”

Expectations

Welsh Government figures released today also revealed that the number of patients waiting for treatment had seen its biggest monthly drop on record and showed a fall in the number of people waiting two years for treatment.

The majority of the 6,900 patients waiting that longest are in north Wales.

A Welsh Government spokesperson said: “The NHS waiting list has fallen and the longest waits are coming down. We have set clear expectations for all health boards to reduce emergency department long stays and complete ambulance handovers within 45 minutes. We have also invested more than £200m this year to help manage more people in the community and avoid hospital admissions.

“The proportion of patients discharged or admitted within 4 hours fell in December, ambulance patient handover delays over 1 hour fell by 43% compared to the same month in 2024 and the average time from arrival to triage was 16 minutes – the joint best since February 2021.

“Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board remains at the highest escalation level, with further measures in place to drive improvement, to ensure people receive the care they deserve.”