Surgery delays, hospitals full... Could healthcare swing the UK election?

‌The English seaside city of Southend-on-Sea has welcomed tourists for hundreds of years. It is famous for having the world's longest iron pleasure pier stretching over two kilometers into the sea. But it is attracting attention for very different reasons in the UK's general election.

The city and surrounding area have some of England's longest waiting times for treatment in the public health system, known as the National Health Service of NHS. For many voters, the future of the NHS is the top issue in this election.

Waiting lists for routine hospital treatment are at or near record levels. A total of 7.57 million routine hospital appointments are on backlog. Over 300,000 people have been waiting for over a year. NHS guidelines for routine non-urgent consultant-led appointments is 18 weeks.

Health care is a devolved issue in the UK, meaning Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England have responsibility for their own National Health Services. In England, junior doctors have gone on a five-day strike over pay in the run-up to the election. The strike action, their eleventh since March 2023, is due to finish two days before the election and cause significant disruption to appointments.

Carol Crowhurst, a former NHS nurse in Southend, says she is sympathetic to the junior doctors and supports their strike action. A retired nurse who worked in accident and emergency and intensive care wards, she has been on a waiting list to be seen by a specialist for the last 10 months.

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Her appointment is scheduled during the strike action and she is concerned she may have an even longer wait if it is canceled. Carol saw many patients in pain waiting on lists come to the A&E department in desperation.‌ "They were waiting for a hip operation or a knee operation, and they were in lots of pain," she said.

"They'd be waiting for their operations and couldn't get pain free so they would come to A&E as a last resort... "It clogs it up with people who don't really need to be there."

Carol's husband Philip, has also spent time on waiting lists. A former truck driver, he was made redundant when he couldn't do his job while waiting two years for knee surgery.

"I used to have to jump in and out of the trucks and I couldn't jump up. If I did I would fall down. I just couldn't do it in the end," he says‌. On the day of his surgery, he waited ten hours before eventually being sent home to wait another two months.

"Seven o'clock in the morning we get to the hospital and I sat there until five o'clock in the afternoon," he said.

Philip has recently been diagnosed with a neurological disorder and was once again on a waiting list for routine checks after an appointment was canceled.

"You normally get a follow-up to go and see a doctor at the end of every year, but the last time it got canceled and I waited about seven or eight months, it went on and on and on," he explained. "Luckily it was stable, if it was someone who got it really, really bad something like that would have been a disaster for you, it really would have been."

Save Southend NHS is a campaign group formed of local residents, including many active supporters who are health and social care professionals.

"People will be looking at who promises to invest in the NHS, who means it and what their plans are," said Tim Sneller, the group's chair. "We will be encouraging people to ask those questions: what is your plan, how are you going to restore funding to the NHS?"

"We've seen fourteen years of cuts to pay for people in the health service, which is one of the main reasons why we are so short of staff, but we've also seen 14 years of underfunding of the basic services," he added.

We asked the Mid Essex and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust about the long waiting times in its region, including Southend‌. In a statement provided to CGTN, Andrew Pike, Chief Operating Officer for Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust, said: "Around one in eight people are waiting for treatment in Southend, which is in line with national NHS waiting list figures, and we are on track to reduce our longest waiting patients to below 65 weeks.

"Southend University Hospital cares for patients from across Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust – one of the largest Trusts in the country. Patients are seen in order of clinical priority, we understand waiting for any treatment or surgery is always difficult and are sorry that some people have had to wait longer than we want them to‌.

"This year we'll be treating more patients. We've already taken action to help reduce waiting lists by increasing access to diagnostic tests, providing more theater and outpatient sessions and validating our waiting lists to ensure they are accurate."

There is consenus across the main parties to maintain the NHS model of free treatment to all, a key feature of the service since it was created by a Labour government after the Second World War. However, with opposition Labour and the incumbent Conservatives both ruling out significant tax rises, working out how to fix the crisis will be a major challenge to however gains power next month.

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