THE GOVERNMENT must address rising rates of delayed discharges of older patients if they are to end corridor care, campaigners warned today.

Age UK urged ministers in PM Andy Burnham’s new Cabinet to deal with delayed discharges, which they say rose nearly 70 per cent in five years and loses the NHS 6.75 million beds each year.

Dealing with this “crisis hiding in plain sight” is essential if there is any hope of reducing or eliminating long A&E wait times and corridor care, it added.

Delayed discharges cost the NHS £229 million in June alone, according to a new Age UK report looking into older people’s experiences with the health service.

Researchers said they were exposed to harm at every stage of treatment, including while waiting for an ambulance, in A&E waiting for admission and for a bed, culminating in delayed discharge when they are well enough to return home.

More than 13,000 people every day are still in hospital despite being medically well enough to go home, with older people overwhelmingly represented among them.

It follows a previous Age UK report in October last year finding the number of people experiencing corridor care has grown 525 times since 2015-15 to over half-a-million incidents in 2025-26.

This number has now increased to 570,957 incidents, with a record 71,000 in January alone.

Age UK charity director Caroline Abrahams said: “Policy-makers have stopped talking about delayed discharges, but they are high and rising – truly a crisis hiding in plain sight.

“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.”