The waiting list fell to 7.27m from 7.28m in May despite a record number of patients being referred for treatment.

Health and social care secretary Yvette Cooper said: ‘I want to thank NHS staff for their extraordinary efforts over this hugely challenging summer.'

A&E saw a record 2.5m attendances last month amid two heatwaves, with the three busiest months ever all recorded between May and July.

Despite the record pressure, more patients were seen, treated or discharged within four hours than in June, with performance improving to 75.4%.

The NHS also delivered its best performance against the 18-week target for planned care for nearly five years, with 65.8% of patients waiting within 18 weeks for treatment in June – the best performance since September 2021.

Ambulance teams handled 829,675 incidents in July – the fourth-highest total on record and the second-highest outside winter – while 999 calls answered rose 6.5% on last July to 898,503.

Category 2 ambulance response times also improved by 2 minutes and 42 seconds since last month, dropping below half an hour despite the exceptional pressure.

A record 2.65m diagnostic tests and checks were carried out in June.

Separate figures show a 2.6% acute sector productivity improvement in 2025/26.

Cooper said the figures revealed how much an additional burden is being placed on the NHS during periods of extreme heat, adding services must start planning for summer pressures in the same way they do for winter.

The health secretary said she was ‘working closely with NHS leaders to put those plans in place, and ensure that our staffing, beds and emergency services are prepared for the demand we know is likely to come, and that our health service can keep delivering for patients, no matter the weather'.

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Nuffield Trust deputy director of research, Sarah Scobie said: ‘Our analysis found that in recent months, as many as one in three patients who were admitted to hospital in an emergency waited over 12 hours between arriving in A&E and getting a hospital bed. In the latest data for July, of all patients who attended A&E over 150,000 were stuck for more than 12 hours. The older you are, the more likely you are to have a very long wait in A&E, so some of the most vulnerable elderly patients are facing agonising delays in overheated emergency departments.'

Sarah Woolnough, chief executive of The King's Fund, said: ‘While today's figures show progress on elective waiting lists and A&E performance, they also should be taken with caution. The Government met its interim target for 18-week waits in March, but waiting lists rising by almost 170,000 since then demonstrates how fragile this progress has been. The NHS continues to face record levels of demand, compounded by the ongoing series of heatwaves, laying bare the threat of climate change to the nation's health.'

NHS England director of the acute and ambulance network at the NHS Alliance, Matthew Hopkins, said: ‘Local NHS leaders have told us the exceptional pressures on emergency care and disruption caused by the hot weather have impacted their ability to maintain planned hospital care.

‘Despite that they've delivered the best elective performance in five years. That is some achievement.

‘And alongside this, it's heartening to see some further progress on NHS productivity,

‘That's a great credit to NHS leaders and staff working to deliver improved performance, transforming care and making every pound invested in the NHS go further.'

Tim Lane, president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, said: ‘While progress in reducing overall waiting times is encouraging, the NHS must not leave behind patients who have already spent more than a year waiting for treatment. 

‘The additional training posts announced this week by the Government are a positive step. However, significant bottlenecks remain in surgical training, and we must ensure that expanding training places leads to more surgeons entering the workforce, so the NHS has the staff it needs to reduce waiting times and meet future demand. 

‘The NHS needs the people, facilities and equipment to keep driving down waiting times. That means investing in surgical staff, modernising ageing NHS buildings and ensuring hospitals have the capacity to continue treating patients efficiently throughout the year.'