NHS bosses have been accused of unacceptable secrecy after deciding no longer to reveal how many hospitals come under such pressure during winter that they have to declare an alert.

NHS England will not publish this winter’s figures for the number of trusts forced to issue an alert under the operational pressures escalation levels (Opel) framework system.

The disclosure last winter that dozens of NHS trusts in England had to issue black alerts – signalling they could not cope with a surge in demand for care – received widespread media coverage. Conditions in hospitals became so stretched last January that the British Red Cross called it a humanitarian crisis.

The shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, said: “It is entirely unacceptable that the true extent of the crisis may not be fully revealed because of a failure to publish details of which trusts have been forced to issue alerts. Ministers must be held accountable for their appalling failure to properly fund our NHS as it heads into another difficult winter.”

The Liberal Democrat MP Norman Lamb, a health minister in the 2010-15 coalition government, said any cover-up by the government over NHS performance would be “a real scandal”.

Lamb said: “There are serious questions as to why figures on trusts under pressure appears to have been dropped from the latest batch of data. It would be a real scandal if the government is trying to cover-up evidence that the NHS is under unsustainable pressure. We need to know immediately when these figures will be made available.”

The Guardian has asked both NHS England and the Department of Health who was involved in the decision and to answer the accusation of burying bad news.

England’s 153 NHS acute hospital trusts are still using the Opel system, which can lead to a hospital shutting its A&E temporarily or sending ambulances elsewhere, or to it receiving extra help.

The change in policy emerged on Thursday when NHS England issued the first set of weekly figures showing how hospitals are performing this winter.

In an accompanying statement it defended the decision, saying it was publishing more data this year than in previous winters. “The NHS nationally has introduced a new system this year for identifying, and acting upon, heightened operational pressures over winter,” it said. “This is centred around the new national emergency pressures panel, chaired by Sir Bruce Keogh, and its decisions about raising, or reducing, their assessments of pressure will be made transparently and published.”

The figures show that 10,184 people had to wait at least half an hour in the back of an ambulance last week because A&E units were so busy. Under new NHS rules, hospitals are supposed to ensure such delays never happen.

Between 27 November and 3 December, 8,340 people waited in an ambulance for 30-60 minutes and another 1,844 waited for more than an hour.

Ashworth said the figures “reveal the dire impact Tory underfunding is already having on thousands of patients unable to promptly access A&E departments right across the country. Some trusts are already completely full with no spare beds, an extremely worrying indicator for what is still to come.”

NHS England and NHS Improvement wrote to all 240 NHS trusts in England on 7 November telling them to ensure no patient ended up being cared for in a corridor or having to wait 12 hours on a trolley to be admitted this winter.

They also made clear that acute hospitals should prepare their A&E units so that “patients do not wait more than 15 minutes in ambulances before being handed over to the hospital”. Trust bosses denounced the regulators’ approach as “barking mad” and unrealistic, given the intense pressures hospitals are under.

The figures also show that hospitals in England were 94.5% full last week – far over the 85% limit that is regarded as the maximum in order to ensure safety.

“It is very early days but it is clearly a concern that bed occupancy – with an average rate of 94.5% – is already running so high as we head into what into what is usually the busiest time of year”, said Chris Hopson, the chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents hospitals.

The Royal College of Nursing said the figures “make depressing reading for both patients and staff”.

“Having so few free beds also means it’s far more difficult to admit patients to the right ward for their condition”, said Janet Davies, the union’s chief executive.

The figures also show:

A&E units at five different NHS trusts were so busy they had to temporarily divert patients to a nearby hospital last week. Manchester University and Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS trusts did that three times each.



An average of 790 beds, both occupied and unoccupied, were shut each day because of an outbreak of norovirus, the diarrhoea and vomiting bug.



No A&E unit had to close completely because it could not cope with a surge in demand from patients needing care.



An NHS England spokesperson said: “The NHS has prepared for winter this year more intensely than ever before, developing robust plans to manage expected increased pressures, as well as create contingency plans to cover exceptional surges in demand.”

