Cooper orders urgent plan to end 'corridor care' for children in NHS hospitals

Health Secretary Yvette Cooper has ordered urgent action to end so-called “corridor care” for children in NHS hospitals, telling the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg she has asked the NHS England chief executive to draw up urgent new standards for children’s A&E treatment.

“No child should be treated in a corridor,” she said. There will be an urgent plan to eliminate corridor care for children as a priority, alongside a plan to end it more broadly across the whole Parliament (https://www.gazetteherald.co.uk/news/national/26647098.health-secretary-pledges-action-end-corridor-care-children-hospitals/). The Government began collecting corridor-care figures this summer and will now gather data on children treated in corridors.

The pledge follows September figures showing 50,582 patients in England waited more than 12 hours from the decision to admit to admission, up from 44,951 in August, while 129,199 waited at least four hours, up from 118,550 (https://www.gazetteherald.co.uk/news/national/26647098.health-secretary-pledges-action-end-corridor-care-children-hospitals/). An average of 3,310 patients a day received corridor care in September — 2,549 in A&E and 761 elsewhere — up from 2,865 a day in August.

Kuenssberg highlighted Finlay Roberts, a two-year-old who died in 2024 after his final hours in a crowded A&E corridor; his father David Roberts called the situation a “terrible mess”, and Cooper apologised to his parents on behalf of the NHS (https://www.thehonanews.com/2026/10/18/urgent-plan-needed-to-end-corridor-care-for-children-health-secretary-says/). More than a dozen health groups had urged the Health Secretary to act before the programme aired.

Cooper, who also announced £140 million to boost urgent care ahead of a “more challenging” winter, said child health must become “a much greater priority for the NHS”.