Responding to the NHS performance statistics published today, which show the waiting list for planned care has reached a record high of 7.57 million, Saffron Cordery, deputy chief executive at NHS Providers said:

"A perfect storm of squeezed funding in the NHS, the pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis, workforce shortages and now industrial action has pushed the waiting list to its highest point at 7.57 million.

"This will ring alarm bells for trust leaders up and down the country as mounting care backlogs inevitably pile more pressure onto an already overstretched NHS. Amid ongoing strikes, this is an extremely busy summer for A&E while ambulance services also face very high demand and more urgent calls.

"Trusts leaders' priority is delivering timely, high-quality patient care. They have made vital progress on this despite tough circumstances, including delivering a record number of tests and checks in June and seeing cancer patient referrals more quickly.

"However, the pressure on urgent and emergency care is relentless. This is felt across the whole system in hospital, ambulance, mental health and community services.

"Trust leaders' efforts to recover urgent and emergency care – and to bring down the waiting list – must be backed nationally with proper support. This includes better government funding in workforce and capital, including beds and vital equipment, and a solution for the challenges in social care.

"The strikes divert trusts' resources from bearing down on backlogs to managing the disruption they cause. It's vital the government and unions talk to find a resolution to the pay dispute. There can be no delay."

You can follow our analysis of the latest performance figures from NHS England through our NHS Activity Tracker campaign.