WAITING times for routine treatment and operations at district hospitals including Airedale are "not where we’d like to be", say health chiefs.

Newly-released figures from NHS England show more than 50,000 patients were on NHS waiting lists at Bradford Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust and Airedale NHS Foundation Trust in February.

According to the data, 14,050 patients at Airedale were waiting for non-urgent elective operations or treatment at the end of February, up from 13,913 the previous month and 10,307 in February last year.

Of these patients, 502 had been waiting for longer than a year.

At Bradford, 37,782 patients were waiting for non-urgent elective operations or treatment in February, marking a rise from 35,698 in January and 33,918 in February last year.

Of these, 525 people had been waiting longer than a year.

In a joint statement, the Airedale trust's chief executive Foluke Ajayi and Bradford trust chief Professor Mel Pickup said: "These figures reflect the exceptionally challenging winter, the ongoing industrial action in the NHS and the continuing impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on our services.

"This is not where we’d like to be for our patients and we are sorry that it isn’t a better position.

"However, we are focused on improving our waiting times and are making real progress."

Separate figures show that 1.6 million patients in England were waiting for a key diagnostic test in February, the same as in January.

Around 11,987 patients at Bradford Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust were waiting for one of 13 standard tests, such as an MRI scan, non-obstetric ultrasound or gastroscopy.

The data stated 31 per cent had been waiting for at least six weeks.

For Airedale, figures showed 4,903 patients were waiting for one of the tests while 863 patients had been waiting for at least six weeks.

One organisation has warned the overall waiting list for the NHS, which currently stands at 7.2 million people, will "continue to swell".

Saoirse Mallorie, senior analyst at the King’s Fund, said ministers had set the NHS an ambitious target to eradicate 18-month waits for planned hospital care and that the figures showed "huge strides" had been made, bringing down the number of 18-month waits from 69,300 to 29,800 in a year. But she warned: "Patients are still facing unacceptably long waits and we can expect to see the overall waiting list continue to swell as the NHS grapples with sustained pressures."