NHS England has launched a dashboard offering insight into NHS trust performance in key areas such as urgent and emergency care, elective services, and mental health, in line with the NHS Oversight Framework 2025/26.
League tables are split into acute, non-acute hospital, and ambulance trusts, ranking organisations relative to their peers and highlighting the improvement required to move into a higher segment.
Tables offer two separate rankings: aggregated metric rankings (AMR) and individual metric rankings (IMR). AMR rankings grant an overall view of trusts in comparison with others of the same type using their average NHS Oversight Framework scores, presenting them in a ranked order. IMR rankings, by contrast, focus on single specific metrics in order to see how trusts are performing in areas such as the 18-week elective care standard.
The top ten non-specialist acute trusts are: Northumbria Healthcare; University College London Hospitals; Imperial College Healthcare; Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells; University Hospitals Bristol and Weston; Guy’s and St Thomas’; Gloucestershire Hospitals; Royal Cornwall Hospitals; East and North Hertfordshire; and Somerset.
Non-acute hospital trusts are also ranked, with North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare coming in first, followed by Midlands Partnership, Berkshire Healthcare, Cambridgeshire Community Services, and Central London Community.
Ranking trusts in this way is a useful indicator of potential areas of variation, according to NHS England, but a number of factors should also be taken into account when consulting the league tables. These include type of trust, differences in the dates data is collected, mergers and acquisitions, and confidence intervals and performance volatility. For additional insight, individual metric scores and RAG ratings are included.
Whilst segmentation can highlight a range of different challenges faced by trusts and the support required from NHS England, segmentation doesn’t show how serious a problem is if it only affects a couple of areas, NHS England states. “That’s where confidence intervals help. They show if a trust that looks strong overall might still need help in a specific area. For example, a trust might rank well overall but struggle with long waiting times for surgery. The confidence intervals can reveal this hidden issue, even if the trust’s average score looks good.”
NHS England guidance for trust boards and ICBs
NHS England has shared a planning framework to set core principles and key planning activities for local leaders on shaping five-year intreated plans covering 2026/27 – 2030/31. For the initial phase, NHS England is asking ICBs and providers to establish clear responsibilities and a multidisciplinary team to coordinate activities across functions for assessing organisational capability, capacity and preparedness. It notes for all organisations to prepare “credible, integrated five-year plans and demonstrate how financial sustainability will be secured over the medium term”.
The organisation launched guidance for trust boards on assessing provider capability, intended to inform a self-assessment, with an emphasis on digital maturity and plans, and data capabilities. It sets out six areas to be assessed on an annual basis, along with associated indicative evidence, covering: strategy, leadership, and planning; quality of care; people and culture; access and delivery of services; productivity and value for money; and financial performance and oversight.
NHS England also outlined ways non-executive directors can contribute to keeping their organisation safe from cyber attack, with Jamie Saunders, non-executive chair of the NHS England Cyber Security Risk Committee, noting, “boards throughout the NHS have a key role to play in safeguarding patients from this risk.” The aim is to provide a resource to support, understand and deal with cyber security risks, and how external assessments provide insights, along with what questions to ask yourself, the board, and the questions the board should ask.
