Public satisfaction with the NHS has improved for the first time since the pandemic but still remains at ‘catastrophically’ low levels.
Ratings increased from a record low of 21 per cent in 2024 to 26 per cent last year, according to an annual ‘gold standard’ survey, which has tracked attitudes since 1983.
Experts described the rise as ‘positive’ but warned the improvements are ‘fragile’ as there has not been any statistically significant change in people’s opinions of general practice, dentistry or hospital care.
Public sentiment peaked at 70 per cent in 2010 and crashed after Covid as the service struggled to recover from the outbreak, with waits for care rocketing.
Many still remain pessimistic, with only 16 per cent of the 3,400 people questioned by the National Centre for Social Research believing the standard of NHS care will improve in the next five years.
More than half of the public (51 per cent) remain ‘very’ or ‘quite’ dissatisfied with the service, according to analysis of the figures by the King’s Fund and the Nuffield Trust health think tanks.
The findings also expose a generational divide.
Just a fifth (20 per cent) of people aged under-35 said they were satisfied with NHS, compared with more than a third (35 per cent) of people aged 65 and over.
Public satisfaction with the NHS has improved for the first time since the pandemic but still remains at ‘catastrophically’ low levels
Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the findings show the NHS is ‘on the road to recovery, but there’s a lot of road ahead’
Mark Dayan, head of public affairs at the Nuffield Trust, said that the proportion of people satisfied with the NHS is ‘only about a quarter of the population’, indicating that the public is still ‘very unhappy’.
He said: ‘These are still numbers that you would have thought were catastrophic in the 2010s, they’re still worse than they were even during the ’90s, a period when the public was widely perceived to be very unhappy about the NHS.’
Dan Wellings, senior fellow at The King’s Fund, said: ‘The rise in public satisfaction will be welcome relief for an NHS that has seen satisfaction plummet in recent years.
‘But whether this marks the start of a genuine recovery or is just brief respite remains an open question.
‘Much will depend on how quickly the Government can improve access to care.’
Sir James Mackey, chief executive of NHS England, said the findings were ‘really encouraging’ but admitted the service has ‘still got a long way to go’.
He added: ‘While I’m incredibly proud of how teams up and down the country are working hard to make sure patients get the services they want and need, there is a huge amount of work ahead of us to get the NHS back to the levels of service our public rightly expect.’
Health Secretary Wes Streeting said: ‘When this government came to office, I said that, while the NHS was broken, it wasn’t beaten.
‘Patients are beginning to feel the change and the NHS is showing that things can get better.
‘The NHS is on the road to recovery, but there’s a lot of road ahead. My foot is pressing down on the accelerator and I won’t stop until the job is done.’
