It has emerged that a £120 million fund that the Welsh Government announced last month (19/6/25) to cut waiting times for Welsh patients will not include funding for Powys residents waiting for treatment in England.
From 1st July, some Powys patients will wait longer than English patients, when being treated in hospitals in England. The plans proposed by Powys Teaching Health Board were agreed back in March. This will lead to Powys patients facing slower access to treatment in English hospitals despite available capacity.
Powys Health Board had said it needed to bring about this action to live within their means and to respond to the financial expectations set out by the Welsh Government. It now means hospitals in Hereford, Shrewsbury, Telford and Oswestry will operate on the slower NHS Wales performance targets, slowing down treatment for Powys patients.
Montgomeryshire MS Russell George has said that when news of a £120 million fund was announced last month to cut waiting times for Welsh patients, he wrote to the Health Secretary Jeremy Miles MS, and asked him to set out how the £120 million would benefit Powys patients who are on a waiting list in England. Responding this week, Mr Miles confirmed that the funding would be targeted at Welsh health board waiting lists.
The Montgomeryshire MS used the opportunity to highlight the unfairness in a powerful Senedd health debate this week (02/07/2025).
Speaking in the debate, Russell George MS, said that people in Powys feel short-changed, and highlighted that none of the recently announced £120 million fund to reduce NHS waiting times will benefit Powys patients waiting for treatment in England.
He challenged the Health Secretary to ensure Powys Teaching Health Board receives sufficient funding to purchase healthcare based on shorter English waiting time standards, adding that the current situation “treats Powys patients as second-class citizens’’.
Speaking after the debate, Mr George said:
“I spoke in the debate to try and get answers for Powys patients, because in a written response to my questions this week, the Health Secretary confirmed that the additional funding of £120 million to reduce the overall size of waiting lists for Welsh Patients, none of this funding would help Powys patients waiting for treatment in English hospitals.
‘’After the debate, it’s clearer than ever that the Welsh Government is again letting Powys down. I again asked for clarification, and yet, Jeremy Miles MS did not address my requests that this additional funding should be used to pay hospitals just over the border in England to treat Powys patients, in the same timeframes as English patients are treated in the same hospitals.
‘’From 1st July, people in Powys will wait longer than patients just over the border, for the same treatment, in the same hospitals, due to the Welsh Government not being prepared to fund Powys Teaching Health Board adequately. This means Powys residents will wait longer for treatment because of financial constraints. This is a failure of political will, not resources.
‘’The government must now act to treat Powys patients fairly, and fund cross-border care properly.”