It certainly is a mixed bag of stats - the average response time in November for ambulances outside London dealing with urgent 999 calls has improved by 30 seconds.

The target standard response time for urgent incidents, defined as calls from people with life-threatening illnesses or injuries, is seven minutes.

November's average response time was nine minutes and 26 seconds.

Data for London is not available, NHS England says.

Hugh Pym
BBC News Health Editor

Latest figures from NHS England show another fall in A&E performance against the four-hour benchmark.

Last month just 68.9% of patients were treated or assessed within four hours, a record low.

The 95% target hasn’t been met since 2015.

There was a slight fall in the numbers waiting more than 12 hours for a bed after a decision to admit – but the figure of 37,837 was still the second highest since records began.

More stats to bring you.

An estimated 410,983 people in England have been waiting more than 52 weeks to start hospital treatment at the end of October, NHS England said.

This is up from 404,851 at the end of the previous month and is the equivalent of around one in 18 people on the entire waiting list.

It is worth noting both the government and NHS England have set the ambition of eliminating all waits of more than a year by March 2025.

We're still digesting all of the latest data released by NHS England, but another key stat is the number of people in England waiting to start routine hospital treatment.

This too has risen to a new record high.

An estimated 7.2 million people were waiting to start treatment at the end of October, NHS England said.

This is up from 7.1 million in September and is the highest since records began in August 2007.

NHS England's new figures for how accident and emergency units are doing show more than 556,307 people had to wait more than four hours before being admitted, transferred or discharged in November.

November's figures are slightly up on October's total of 554,446 patients.

Image source, Getty Images

A children's hospital trust has told the BBC that it is under "significant, sustained pressure" due to high levels of respiratory infections this winter.

That’s as parents nationwide are urged to get their children a flu vaccine, after a 70% jump in hospital admissions of patients under five.

Birmingham Women and Children's Trust says it has seen an "unprecedented" rise in patients in the emergency department at its children's hospital.

A number of units were also reporting a lack of beds for admissions, it said.

In its letter, the trust said: "The children's hospital emergency department is incredibly busy - those who are not seriously ill will face very long waits to be seen and may need to go elsewhere for help.

”It’s urged people to “ease the pressure on staff” by viewing the trust's virtual consultations to get advice about when they should go to A&E or get advice from NHS 111 online.

Owain Clarke
BBC Wales health correspondent

Patients being treated in chairs, staff in tears and an 18-hour wait for transfer from an ambulance.

These are some of the extreme pressures experienced by the Royal Glamorgan Hospital's emergency department.

Dr Amanda Farrow was called in early to a recent shift at the site serving much of the south Wales valleys because the nurse in charge felt it was "unsafe".

On arrival, the number of patients waiting for beds was far higher than the trollies available.

Meanwhile, six ambulances queued outside, unable to hand over their patients and, as a result, also unable to respond to other emergency calls.

Dr Farrow, lead consultant at the A&E department of the hospital near Llantrisant, Rhondda Cynon Taf, says: "She has never rung me before so I know when I get that phone call that I just need to get up and come in."

Read more here.

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In a little under half an hour we'll get the latest figures for how long people spent waiting in England's NHS accident and emergency units last month.

These figures will show how many people were waiting on a trolley in A&E before a hospital bed was found for them.

We'll bring you the top line of those statistics when they come out at 09:30 and then our Health journalists will crunch the numbers and bring us the breakdown.

Given the figures for October - not the depths of winter - showed 40% of A&E patients had to spend four hours or more on a trolley and 10% waited more than 12 hours - we'll be able to see how the NHS is coping as we head into the coldest months of the year.

Across the BBC we have been asking for your experiences, thoughts and opinions on the issues and pressures facing the NHS.

Paul Isles, from Kent, tells BBC Radio 5 Live his father - who suffers from Parkinson's disease and has a history of heart problems - had a fall on 24 November.

After long waits for an ambulance his father was eventually taken to the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford.

Paul tells 5 Live:

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Rob Sissons
Reporting from an urgent treatment centre in Derby

In the East Midlands all our A&E’s are under massive pressure.

Treatment centres like this one are designed to take the pressure off A&E by dealing with urgent rather than life-threatening cases.

And just minutes after opening this morning, the waiting room is already filling up.

Lydia Rogers, service manager at the facility, says not everyone is aware of the treatment they can seek here.

"It’s about patient education," she says. "I think not everybody knows that you can access here the care that you would receive at A&E.

"And it’s our job to keep some of that pressure off A&E. We only send people on there for cases that we can’t treat here – but 99% of things we can deal with here.

"We can keep you out of A&E and get you seen a lot quicker. We can provide care for a great deal of things."

Marie-Louise Connolly
reporting from the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast

The Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast is the largest emergency department in Northern Ireland and it has been extremely busy all week.

As it copes with regional trauma and winter pressures there have been on average 300 patients attending every day.

Consultant Dr Ian Carl said: "Currently we have 119 people in our department, we only have 57 actual bed spaces for those patients so you can imagine how congested that means the department has become."

Unlike everywhere else in the UK, Northern Ireland doesn't have a functioning government at the moment.

Dr Carl believes this is having an impact on health services.

"It is massive," he says. "We have had five or six healthcare reviews in the last 10 or 15 years - none of which have actually ever come to fruition in terms of managing the services we need to be modernised.

Every time we have any input of money into the system they are usually for short-term goals without any real long-term strategies of tens or 20s of years.

"So there are huge challenges which need to be addressed."

Hugh Pym
Health Editor reporting from Milton Keynes

When ambulance crews bring people to hospital, they’re meant to be able to hand over their patients to A&E staff within 15 minutes.

But an analysis by the BBC shows by late November more than 11,000 ambulances were spending over an hour stuck in queues outside hospitals every week.

That is one in seven of all arrivals, and the highest since records began in 2010.

BBC nhealth editor Hugh Pym joined two crew from South Central Ambulance Service on shift in Milton Keynes to see the problems this is causing first-hand.

Gill Dummigan
Health Correspondent reporting from Royal Preston Hospital

It's late morning; there's a queue of ambulances, and four of them have patients waiting inside because A&E is too full to safely take them.

This is the reality of emergency care now, not just here but in hospitals around the country.

"Sadly ambulance queuing is a fact for us, as it is for many other trusts at the moment," Dr Michael Stewart, a consultant in emergency medicine, tells me.

"We always find ways for the most critically ill - those who need resuscitation - we will move heaven and earth to find a space to get them in, but the ones who are more stable and who clinically can wait sometimes do have to wait outside.

"Dr Stewart admits he finds the situation worrying: "As soon as they arrive on the site, ethically and morally I think they're my patients and my responsibility, and if I can't get them into my department and start that assessment then I'm looking after them without that direct line of sight.

"Every available cubicle and chair is occupied. Dr Stewart says that while 56 people are ready to go to a ward, it appears there is no space to take them.

Image source, PA Media

Lisa Corbett's 85-year-old father is here after a bad fall. She says he waited six hours for an ambulance having arrived on Monday evening and was only given a bay on Tuesday afternoon.

"He was in the corridor all night long with lots of other patients who had been there hours before him," Lisa says.

"They came round and gave them blankets to keep people warm. They did keep a check as best they could." She says the staff are doing a "fantastic job".

"They've managed to assess him, keep doing the tests and the blood pressure. We might be lucky that he might come home... or maybe go up on a ward, but there's no beds."

A senior NHS executive says the health service isn't in crisis - and there is a plan to drastically improve things by this time next year.

Chris Hopson, the chief strategy officer for NHS England, says that while the NHS is dealing with record demand there are 13,000 medically fit patients doctors would like to discharge but cannot due to pressures on social care.

Speaking on Radio 4's Today programme, Hopson said the NHS is still feeling the pressures of the Covid pandemic.

"We do have a very clear three-point plan," he says.

"The first is we know we need to recover and stabilise our core services like A&E, ambulances, recover those planned care waiting lists.

"We need to get back to delivering the key ambitions we put in the long-term plan to improve health outcomes.

"Third, we know we need to transform the NHS for the future.

"Hopefully in a year's time we will be in a better position than we currently are."

Gem O'Reilly
Live reporter

Laura is an ear, nose and throat (ENT) surgeon in the north Midlands assessing and managing A&E patients who require admission or specialist surgical advice.

She told me how difficult it’s becoming.

Laura said: “Every winter they say it’s the worst winter for the NHS, but this year it feels like it actually is. Each year it does seem to get more and more. There’s little room to relieve pressure and if you do, it just gets pushed somewhere else.

“I don’t see the front side of A&E, but we deal with those from A&E and it comes to the point where patients haven’t been assigned a bay because there’s nowhere to put them.”

I asked Laura what it felt like to see services going through this after she spent so long trying to get into her speciality.

She replies: “I think exhausting is a good word to describe it. I’ve been in the NHS for 15 years, and in that time I’ve seen significant changes in the way we work.

"Rota gaps and deficiencies are in all areas in terms of services.”

She explained that when healthcare had been diminished or privatised, “you can’t treat patients properly, and that leaves you feeling very unsatisfied at the end of the day.”

Laura went on to say Covid was still having an impact on doctors, many of whom had worked in critical care for two years.

As a result there was “massive burnout” and patients waiting “unnecessarily long times to be treated“.

She added: “Healthcare professionals are just pouring from an empty cup all the time. People are exhausted.

"The result of that is you see strikes being brought to the table now. This is the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”

Nick Triggle
Health Correspondent

Lying on a trolley in a hospital corridor in pain from a broken hip, Anne Whitfield-Ray could not believe she was in the care of the NHS.

"It was absolute chaos - like something out of a third world country," said the 77-year-old from Worcestershire.

"The staff were rushed off their feet, paint was peeling off the walls and patients were being squeezed in everywhere they could - in makeshift bays, in corridors and side rooms. It was horrific."

Anne spent 15 hours in that position until a bed could be found for her.

You can read more about Anne Whitfield-Ray's story here.

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Unions say the problems facing the emergency care system are one of the reasons why members working in the NHS are going on strike.

Members of the Royal College of Nursing are set to walk-out on15 and 20 December in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Ambulance staff across most of England and Wales will also go on strike on 21 December in a dispute over pay.

The government says the NHS will publish its emergency care recovery plan in the new year, which will set out proposals to improve ambulance response times and A&E performance in England.

A spokesman at the Department of Health said an extra £500m was being made available to speed up hospital discharges and make space in A&E, creating the equivalent of at least 7,000 more beds this winter."

This will be supported by an additional £6.6bn in the NHS over the next two years to enable rapid action to improve urgent and emergency care performance towards pre-pandemic levels," he added.

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Sam Hancock
BBC News Live reporter

Image source, Getty Images

A junior doctor, who works at a hospital in the East Midlands, has been telling me what it’s like to work in emergency medicine right now.

Their name’s not being reported to protect their identity.

When ambulance crews take patients to hospital they’re meant to be able to hand them over to A&E staff within 15 minutes - and nobody should have to wait more than 30 minutes.

But analysis by the BBC showed that during a week in late November, more than 11,000 ambulances spent over an hour stuck in queues outside hospitals.

That was one in seven of all arrivals - and the highest since records began in 2010.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he would sit down with the NHS "relatively soon" to discuss the issues around ambulance waiting times.

Speaking last week Sunak said he wanted to see waiting times come down and the government had put more money into the NHS to help address the issue.

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Image source, Family handout

When 85-year-old Koulla suffered a fall at home, her family immediately rang for an ambulance.

She was in agonising pain after breaking her hip.

The family made the call at around 8pm. It took another 14 hours for an ambulance to get to Koulla, leaving her granddaughter - who was pregnant - to care for her through the night.

When the ambulance crew arrived, they gave Koulla pain relief and took her to the Royal Cornwall Hospital.

But her wait to be seen didn’t end there, because her vehicle had to join a line of around 30 ambulances queuing to hand over patients to A&E staff.

It was another 26 hours before she was taken into A&E.

She then faced many hours in the department before being taken for surgery.

Read the full account of what happened here.