Age UK has called for the term ‘bed-blocking’ to be abolished, labelling it ‘victim-blaming and ageist’, as new analysis shows delayed hospital discharges – overwhelmingly older people – in England have soared by nearly 70% in just five years.
The charity has warned that the crisis in delayed discharges is a primary driver behind the rise of ‘corridor care’, with more than 13,000 patients medically fit to leave stuck in hospital on any given day. The charity’s report, The Longest Wait to Leave, reveals that in 2025/26, more than half (57%) of people that could be discharged on a typical day remained in hospital, costing the NHS an estimated £2.66 billion over the year.
Caroline Abrahams, Charity Director at Age UK, said: ‘Policy makers have stopped talking about delayed discharges, but they are high and rising – truly a crisis hiding in plain sight. They do enormous harm to older people and cost the NHS and the taxpayer an absolute fortune. What’s more, we will never end the horror of corridor care at the front door of hospitals, for as long as we fail to get a grip on the problem of delayed discharges at the back door.’
A staggering 6.75 million bed days were lost to discharge delays of seven days or more in 2025/26. In June 2026 alone, delayed discharges cost the NHS over £229 million, with bed occupancy rates for adult general and acute beds standing at 94.5% – well above the 85% threshold experts deem safe.
Age UK argues that the issue is compounded by a lack of social care and damaging funding disputes between the NHS and local councils over who pays for a person’s support, leaving patients stuck in the middle and at risk of deterioration.
The charity highlighted this with a powerful quote from an older person’s relative: ‘My father was due to leave hospital and had been allocated a rehabilitation slot nearby. But because he was on dialysis and his stay in hospital had been weeks, his dialysis slot in the community had been given to someone else. So, Dad could not leave hospital as there were no slots locally. We were not informed that he had lost his slot. My father ended up dying a horrible death in hospital with no dignity or compassion for him or his family.’
Abrahams added: ‘Our report shows how terrible the impact on older people is when they are medically fit for discharge, but the arrangements cannot be put in place quickly enough or at all to allow this to happen. They are the victims in these situations, and that’s why we feel very strongly that the term ‘bed blockers’, which contains more than a tinge of ageism, should never be used again.’
The problem is unequally distributed, with just 32 NHS Trusts accounting for half of all delayed discharges in one month.
Abrahams, however, sees a solution: ‘The good news is that it’s a problem we can solve, with political will, the right policy responses and by applying the lessons from those hospitals that have made progress in tackling delays. Above all we must agree a new approach that ends the squabbles between councils and the NHS about who pays for an older person’s support when they are fit to go home from hospital; increase the overall number of hospital beds; and build up capacity in the community to take these older people back and help them to make a good recovery, in part by making much greater use of voluntary sector effort, such as that we offer Age UK.
‘Ultimately of course, we also need to reform social care so there are more and better services available to reduce the risks of older people needing to go to hospital in the first place, and to give them the support they need to get well again, when a hospital stay is unavoidable and they are well enough to leave.
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