The NHS managed to ‘safely keep the show on the road’ despite industrial action last week, with data showing more than 95% of planned elective activity going ahead for patients.
Data published today shows the NHS met its ambitious goal to maintain 95% of planned care during this round of strike action – surpassing the 93% protected during action in July – while still maintaining critical services, including maternity services and urgent cancer care.
Over 850,000 patients got the elective care they needed over the five days of strikes – this is 25,000 more patients than if the percentage of activity was the same as the July strike [25 July 2025 – 30 July 2025].
This is thanks to the heroic efforts of NHS staff working round the clock to keep services open for patients, while also competing with additional pressures including Storm Claudia and an early rise in flu cases.
There were on average 17,236 resident doctors absent from work each day this time round – slightly higher than the 16,162 average in the last set of strikes. The higher figure is due in part to the fact that more resident doctors would have been rostered to work during the tougher winter months, than in summer.
The industrial action came on the back of an offer to the BMA’s resident doctors committee that they did not put to their members.
The government offer would have delivered more training places for resident doctors, put more money in their pockets to cover training costs and improved their working lives – on top of the 29% pay rise they have received in the last three years.
While the NHS 10-point plan to improve resident doctors’ working lives is focused on fixing key issues that matter to the profession including cutting payroll errors, reducing unnecessary repetition of training, improving annual leave requests, and ensuring staff have access to proper rest facilities and hot food.
Almost all NHS trusts (95%) now have a board director with responsibility for resident doctor issues, and a resident doctor peer lead to ensure their concerns are heard and acted on.
Sir James Mackey, NHS chief executive, said: “This has been a monumental effort by NHS teams, and I want to thank all staff who helped to safely keep the show on the road – continuing almost all care for patients and ensuring the NHS remained open for those who needed it.
“But that doesn’t mean things were easy– there are still some patients who had their care disrupted, and as with every strike it takes significant time and effort from staff to manage, which otherwise would be put towards delivering more for patients and helping to get down the backlog.
“We must do everything we can to prevent this from continuing. It is bad for patients, bad for staff and bad for the NHS and is not representative of what all resident doctors want. I urge the BMA to work with the government and NHS as we continue to make further improvements for resident doctors.”
Health and Social Care Secretary, Wes Streeting, said: “The NHS weathered the storm better than ever before and delivered tens of thousands more appointments for patients. No one wants the NHS to have to get better at dealing with strikes, but patients should rest assured that, should the BMA walk out again, the NHS team will pull together and care for as many of them as possible.
“There were still far too many patients who suffered because the BMA refused to put the government’s offer to its members. Polling shows that resident doctors wanted to accept the government’s offer of more jobs and better career progression.
“These strikes didn’t need to happen, and I hope the BMA will now get serious about resolving this dispute.”
There are 79,000 resident doctors, previously named junior doctors, working across the NHS. They make up half of all doctors in the NHS and have anywhere up to eight years’ experience working as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or up to three years in general practice.
